The Broad the vision character is prominent (see Hab. ii, 1-3), and the general tone of the prophecy corresponds. In all these books we note one common trait: they deal not ened Horizon with the sins and calamities of Israel, or with her civic and religious affairs, but with the character and destiny of other nations: Obadiah with Edom, Nahum with Nineveh, Habakkuk taking occasion from Chaldea, whose approach is imminent in his time, but really concerned more with the spiritual condition of the world at large. In other words, their horizon was broadened: their vision was touched with the sense of the greater world beyond the confines of the Judean land, a world where, whatever its prestige or material might, the same forces of human and divine nature were at work as at home, and where as at home character and destiny were a calculable sequence of cause and effect. That was a great truth for the teachers of a small and harassed people to realize. Of all these so-called visions, however, the Book of Isaiah is far and away the most luminous and comprehensive. Not only the earliest in time, it is also the type and pioneer of all this species of prophecy. This large vision character is evident from the outset. We have seen how Isaiah the son of Amoz begins his "word" with the prediction that in the latter days "the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it" (Isa. ii, 2-4); and how in consequence of the spiritual power and grace flowing from this center the nations shall learn righteousness and unlearn war. This is the real theme, the ever-potent keynote of his book; it projects his whole prophecy on the world scale. He has indeed to work with the civic and religious affairs of his time and land; has to nurse the embryotic faith of a remnant; has to keep the city inviolate and the Davidic dynasty intact; but in all these temporal issues he keeps the larger ideal bright and true, and out of them he evolves the wonderful concept of a Personage, an individual Sovereign, in whose wisdom and power the ideal may be made real. The whole section of the book comprised in the first twelve chapters maps out, as it were, the field of this vision in its relation to Israel. And if in his generation the son of Amoz must needs leave the story of the vision only half told, yet like the ball of the gamester he leaves it in position for the next play. So far as to the general tone and pressure of the First Isaiah's prophecy. The literary make-up of the book as we have it, whether determined by him or by later editors and supplementers, fully justifies the title "vision" as applied to the whole. The three main divisions into which the book naturally falls — like three acts in a mighty five-act drama —are all led up to and culminate in apocalyptic vaticinations and songs (chaps. xii, xxiv–xxvii, xxxiv–xxxv), all expanding the specific prophecies of their sections into the more spacious proportions of world vision. The middle section of these (chaps. xiii-xxvii, let us call it Act II) is quite in the vision character exemplified in Obadiah and Nahum, consisting as it mainly does of a series of oracles on the nations which have had relations with Judah; in which oracles their character and destiny are assessed according to the same spiritual principles that govern the prophet. Those nations, like Judah, are in the care of and subject to the judgments of Jehovah of Hosts, the Holy One of Israel. Such is the broadened horizon that with the vision of Isaiah has entered into the purview of prophecy. NOTES. 1. The Utterance of the Vision. Closely connected with the term "vision" another word now appears in prophecy: the word " burden" or "oracle." It is indeed the first title of Nahum (that prophecy has two titles, Nah. i, 1), and the only title of Habakkuk (Hab. i, 1). This word (Heb. massa', lit. a lifting up," as of a song or oracular utterance) is first used in this sense by Isaiah, who in chapters xiii to xxiii of his book prefixes it to a long series of utterances, all of the same general character. The word "burden" is to the word "vision" as announcement to a heard or seen revelation. The idea of vision and burden is described in a realistic way by Habakkuk : "I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and I will look forth to see what he will speak with me, and what I shall answer concerning my complaint. And Jehovah answered me, and said, 'Write the vision, and make it plain upon tablets, that he may run that readeth it'” (Hab. ii, 1, 2). A similar realistic touch is given by Isaiah, in his announcement of the fall of Babylon (Isa. xxi, 6–9), in "the burden of the desert of the sea." 2. The Plan of the Book of Isaiah. It may be well to set down here, for convenience of reference, the main divisions into which, in my view, the Book of Isaiah falls. My literary study of it, as completed, has resulted in my regarding it as essentially one theme, like a sublime dramatic movement, in five acts, in which the action is carried on not by dialogue or dramatis personæ but by the prophet as a kind of chorus, as in the Greek drama. It is of course in a highly accommodated sense that this analogy of the drama is suggested. The following outline is here submitted: PROEM, i ACT I. The latent peril and potency in Israel and Judah, i–xii. INTERMEZZO AND SHIFT OF SCENE, xl ACT IV. The second onset: the Chaldean experience, xli-lv. An. analysis so condensed as this is of course not self-explaining; we must look to the book itself for that. From the of Vision Not only is the horizon of Isaiah's vision broadened from a provincial to a world outlook. The plane of vision also is so much higher that he can look down as it Higher Plane were from a third dimension into the heart of human nature, seeing the essential manhood, or the lack of it, in all mankind. He is the first to import into prophecy this extraordinarily penetrative power of spiritual vision; the first, and with his later collaborator the Second Isaiah, the ablest. We see this in the remarkable series of "burdens," or oracles, which in the second section of his book (Act II, chaps. xiii-xxiii) take up one by one the character of each of the leading peoples with which Israel had relations. It is not merely because they are enemies of Israel that he denounces them, nor is his tone always denunciatory. It is as often in pity and promise. The plight of Babylon comes first,1 as most typical and farreaching (xiii, xiv); and he has in mind, apparently, not so much her military ferocity as her ancient culture, a culture that has made her the intellectual and spiritual exactress (see xiv, 4, margin) of the world. The day of Jehovah is at hand, and all her culture is of no avail to meet it (xiii, 6-8); her plight is spiritual sterility and impotence, "I will make a man more rare than fine gold, even a man than the pure gold of Ophir" (xiii, 12). In the Second Isaiah this trait is taken up repeatedly and pushed to satire (cf. xli, 21-24; xlvii, 12-15). Of like nature are the indictments brought against other nations: pride and arrogancy in Moab (xvi, 6); spiritual leanness and barrenness in northern Israel (xvii, 4, 5); fatuous ideas and counsels in Egypt (xix, 11-15); and frivolous lack of foresight in his own city (xxii, 1-14), the place which, of all others, should be the valley of vision." All these he regards, however, with the sympathy of a true missionary spirit, and from their fate extracts some connection with the enlightening influence of Israel. He has a good word even for Assyria; and in spite of the severity of chapter x, 5-19, admits that nation, after its work is done, to fellowship in Jehovah's great purpose: "In that day," he says, "shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that Jehovah of hosts hath blessed them, saying, 'Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work 1 There are indications (if we ignore the heading) that the chapters on Babylon are by an exilic writer; but in all this section there is doubtless a predominating amount of Isaiah's work, and all is in his characteristic vein. We will remember that the assembling and completing of the book were done at a later period. of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance'" (xix, 24, 25). It takes a vision both broad and deep, a vision tolerant with the outlasting grace of God, to utter such prophecies as this. And such is the vision of destiny opened and bravely maintained through his life by Isaiah the son of Amoz. II Stimulus of a Royal Patron. It is in Isaiah indeed that we find the central and dominant personal force of his generation; but it is not to be supposed that a literary utterance so mature as his was a strange or solitary phenomenon. An author connotes an audience; a new current of ideas, a fitting channel in which to run and prosper. Isaiah was not alone: we have already seen what an efficient work-fellow he had in his contemporary Micah. The two together succeeded in launching not only a new order of prophetic ideal but to some extent a mold of concepts, a prophetic terminology, for the era succeeding. We have seen also how, when the summons came from Sennacherib requiring the answer that should test Israel's faith, King Hezekiah's despondent message to Isaiah was couched in the terms of his prophetic vocabulary: "The children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth" (Isa. xxxvii, 3). We seem to see from this that King Hezekiah was quite in sympathy with the work of Isaiah, and sincerely desirous to share in the prophet's intrepid confidence, but perhaps had neither the backing of his nobles nor a large enough "remnant" of the people to make his faith an assured strength. But the Assyrian crisis revealed only one aspect of the king's character. It was, in fact, not his relations with foreign affairs and invasions which stood as the chief distinction of Hezekiah's reign. It was rather his work in the domestic upbuilding of the kingdom, - work designed to promote a sounder religious and moral fiber in the heart |