Note that Isaiah calls the entire outward religion of his contemporaries a 'commandment of men that is taught '- human ordinances learned by rote. The ceremonial law is human; only the moral law is in his eyes divine.

Be ye amazed and marvel;

Blind yourselves, and be blind; Be drunken, but not with wine;

Stagger, but not with strong drink.

For the Lord hath poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, And hath closed your eyes and muffled your heads.

And the whole vision hath become to you as the words of a book that is sealed, which if men deliver to a scholar, saying,Read this, I pray thee,' he saith, 'I cannot, for it is sealed'; and if the book be delivered to one that is not a scholar, saying, 'Read this, I pray thee,' he saith, 'I am no scholar.'

And the Lord said,

Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, And with their lips do honour me,

But their heart is removed far from me,

And their fear of me hath become a commandment of men that is taught:

Therefore, behold, I will continue to deal wonderfully with this people.

Yea, wonderfully and wondrously,

And the wisdom of their wise men shall perish,

And the discernment of their prudent men shall be hid.

§7. A rebuke of doubters and murmurers.-In the following (seventh) section only the opening verse (relating to the secret Egyptian alliance) appears to be Isaiah's. The remainder, perhaps a substitution for an Isaianic passage which had become illegible (Duhm), is at bottom consolation rather than rebuke. The Jewish lack of faith in the final redemption from the foreign oppressor (? Persia) is condemned, but the redemption itself will surely come. To the writer the cause of God and righteousness was identified with the material prosperity and political independence of the Jews. In this he was wrong. But the doubters did not disbelieve in this erroneous identification; they disbelieved in the triumph of the cause of righteousness and of God. Therefore they were still more wrong. Interpreting the writer's words as an outburst of faith in God and goodness in the midst of sorrow and suffering, we may still find in them a lesson and a hope.

EARNEST LIPS, BUT DISTANT HEARTS

Woe unto them that hide their plan deep from the Lord,
And their doings are in the dark,

And they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?

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[O your perverseness! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay,

That the work should say of him that made it, He made me not;

Or the thing framed say of him that framed it, He hath no understanding?

Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into garden land,

And the garden land shall be esteemed as a forest?

And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, And the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.

And the afflicted shall increase their joy in the Lord,

And the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

For the tyrant is brought to nought and the scorner is consumed,

And all that watch for iniquity are cut off:

That make a man guilty by a word,

And lay a snare for him that is an umpire in the gate,
And overcome the righteous with falsity.

Therefore thus saith the Lord, the God of the house of
Jacob, who redeemed Abraham :

Jacob shall no longer be ashamed, neither shall his face wax pale.

For when he seeth the work of mine hands in his midst,
They shall sanctify my name,

And sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and shall fear the
God of Israel.

And they that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, And they that murmured shall learn doctrine.]

§ 8. The Egyptian alliance.—The following section deals again with the Egyptian alliance. The second paragraph seems to be a summary of a separate discourse.

Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord,

Who carry out a plan, but not from me,

And make a treaty, but not with my spirit,

That they may add sin to sin!
That set forth to go down into Egypt,
And have not asked at my mouth;
To flee unto the refuge of Pharaoh,
And to hide in the shadow of Egypt.
Therefore shall the refuge be to you a shame,
And the hiding shall be confusion.
For though his princes be in Zoan,

And his messengers reach to Hanes,

Yet shall all come to shame from a people which cannot profit them,

Which bringeth no help and no profit, but only shame and reproach.

Through a land of distress and trouble, Whence come the lioness and the lion,

The viper and the flying dragon,

They carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses,
And their treasures upon the humps of camels,
Unto a people which cannot profit them,

Whose help is empty and vain.

Egypt at this time was ruled by the Ethiopian Tirhakah. Zoan is in the north of Egypt at the mouth of the Nile, Hanes is south of Memphis. Zoan and Hanes thus mark the extreme limits of Lower Egypt, which in times of political confusion were the seats of independent kingdoms. The prophet says of Tirhakah that he ruled directly as far as Hanes, and indirectly even as far north as Zoan.'

§ 9. The bulging wall and the final crash.—The following (ninth) section seems to form the conclusion to a collection of Isaianic discourses from the beginning of the twenty-eighth chapter. Isaiah is to write down the prophecies, or a summary of them, connected with the Egyptian alliance and the relations with Assyria and Sennacherib. Perhaps subsequent Isaianic material to the close of the group (i.e. to the end of chapter xxxiii) was originally placed before the present section. The Egyptian alliance still figures prominently. Note the grand simile of the crack in the wall. The slight beginnings of transgression, its inevitable tendency to gravitate more and more from the moral perpendicular, till a critical point is reached, then the suddenness of the final catastrophe, are vividly expressed by this magnificent simile' (Skinner). It is an entire sermon in a single figure.

THE SALVATION OF TRUST

Now go in, write it down [before them on a tablet],

And inscribe it in a book,

That it may be for a future day,

For a witness for ever.

For it is a rebellious people, lying children,

Sons that will not hear the teaching of the Lord : Who say to the seers, 'See not,'

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And to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things; Speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceptions; Get ye out of the way, turn aside out of the path,

Keep silence before us about the Holy One of Israel.' Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel: Because ye despise this word, and trust in perverseness and crookedness, and stay yourselves thereon; therefore this guilt shall be to you as a crack sinking and bulging out in a high wall, whose crash cometh suddenly and at an instant and it shall be broken as the breaking of a potter's vessel, shiveringly, unsparingly, so that there will not be found among its fragments a sheard with which to take fire from the hearth or to draw water from the cistern.

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: By returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. But ye would not, and ye said, 'No; for we will fly upon horses '—therefore, shall ye flee, and on swift coursers we will ride'-therefore, shall your pursuers be swift. At the menace of five shall ye flee; till ye be left as a flag-staff on the top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill.

§ 10. The good time to come.-The tenth section is once more a post-exilic interpolation, describing the destruction of the national enemies and the material and spiritual well-being of the delivered Jews. It is a sad fact of human nature, that in a certain stage of religious development the enemies of the community are ever regarded as the enemies of God, and their punishment, whether in this world or the next, is expected with equanimity and satisfaction. But it is untrue and unfair to make this general trait of all religions a special characteristic of the later Judaism. (Domestic idolatry still lingered down to the Maccabean period.)

[And therefore will the Lord be eager that he may be gracious unto you, and he lifteth himself up that he may

have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgement; happy are all they that wait for him.

For, O people in Zion that dwellest in Jerusalem, thou shalt not weep; he will surely be gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; as soon as he heareth thee, he answereth thee. And though the Lord gave thee the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, thy Teacher shall no longer hide himself, but thine eyes shall see thy Teacher: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, whether ye turn to the right hand or to the left. And ye shall defile the covering of thy graven images of silver, and the overlaying of thy molten images of gold: thou shalt cast them away as an unclean thing: thou shalt say unto them, Get thee hence.

Then shall he give the rain for thy seed, that thou mayest sow the ground withal; and the bread of the produce of the ground shall be fat and plenteous. In that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures, and the oxen and asses that till the ground shall eat salted provender, winnowed with the shovel and the fan. And there shall be upon every lofty mountain, and upon every high hill, rivulets and watercourses, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. And the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.]

Thine eyes shall see thy Teacher.' The 'Teacher' is God. In the 'Messianic' age the regenerate people will realize his will and follow it; God will be near them and felt to be near. Such seems

to be the meaning.

6

§ 11. The destruction of Assyria. -The eleventh section describes in poetic and metaphorical manner the final destruction of the Assyrians by the direct intervention of the Almighty. Professor Duhm thinks it was written during the actual invasion of Sennacherib. Jehovah's coming is like that of the thundercloud which appears on the distant horizon, no eye having observed the mysterious process by which it was formed. In what follows the figure of the storm is inseparably blended with an anthropomorphic representation of Jehovah' (as the God of tempest and thunder) (Skinner). It should be mentioned that Professor Cheyne from literary and theological reasons regards the section as an early post-exilic interpolation.