Chapter 3

shall stand for an ensign of the people, to it shall the Gentiles seek, and His rest shall be glory;" comp. chap. lx., where the delighted eye of the Prophet beholds how the crowds of the nations from the whole earth turn to Zion; chap. xviii., where the future reception of the Ethiopians into the Kingdom of God is specially prophecied; chap. xix., according to which Egypt turns to the God of Israel, and by the tie of a common love to Him, is united with Asshur, his rival in the time of the Prophet, and so likewise with Israel, which has so much to suffer from him; chap. xxiii., according to which, in the time of salvation. Tyre also does homage to the God of Israel. The Servant of God becomes, at the same time, the _Witness_, and the Prince and Lawgiver of the nations, chap. lv. 4. Just as the Spirit of the Lord rests upon Him, chap. xi. 2, xlii. 1, lxi. 1, so there takes place in His days an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, chap. xxxii. 15, xliv. 3, comp. with chap. liv. 13. Sin is put an end to by Him, chap. xi. 9, and an end is put especially to war, chap. ii. 4. The Gentiles gathered to the Lord become at last the medium of His salvation for the covenant-people, who at first had rejected it, chap. xi. 12, lx. 9, lxvi. 20, 21. The end is the restoration of the paradisaic condition, chap. xi. 6-9, lxv. 25; the new heavens and the new earth, chap. lxv. 17, lxvi. 22; but the wicked shall inherit eternal condemnation, chap. lxvi. 24.

[Footnote 1: _Vitringa_: There are no predictions in reference to the temporal deliverance of the Jewish Church, in which the Prophet shews himself more than in those which relate to the downfall of the Babylonian Empire, and the deliverance of the people of God by Cyrus.]

[Pg 10]

THE PROPHECY--CHAP. II.-IV. THE SPROUT OF THE LORD.

It has been already proved, in Vol. i., p. 416 ff., that this discourse belongs to the first period of the Prophet's ministry. It consists of three parts. In the first, chap. ii. 2-4, the Prophet draws a picture of the Messianic time, at which the Kingdom of God, now despised, should be elevated above all the kingdoms of the world, should exercise an attractive power over the Gentiles, and should cause peace to dwell among them; comp. Vol. i., p. 437 ff. In the second part, from chap. ii. 5-iv. 1, the Prophet describes the prevailing corruption, exhorts to repentance, threatens divine judgments. This part is introduced, and is connected with the preceding, by the admonition in ii. 5, addressed to the people, to prepare, by true godliness, for a participation in that blessedness, to beware lest they should be excluded through their own fault. In the third part, chap. iv. 2-6, the prophet returns to the proclamation of salvation, so that the whole is, as it were, surrounded by the promise. It was necessary that this should be prominently brought out, in order that sinners might not only be terrified by fear, but also allured by hope, to repentance,--and in order that the elect might not imagine that the sin of the masses, and the judgment inflicted in consequence of it, did away with the mercy of the Lord towards His people, and with His faithfulness to His promises. Salvation does not come without judgment. This feature, by which true prophetism is distinguished from false, which, divesting God of His righteousness, announced salvation to unreformed sinners, to the whole rude mass of the people,--this feature is once more prominently brought out in ver. 4. But salvation for the elect comes as necessarily as judgment does upon the sinners. In the midst of the deepest abasement of the people of God, God raises from out of the midst of them the Saviour by whom they are raised to the highest glory, chap. iv. 2. They are installed into the dignity of the saints of God, after the penitent ones have been renewed by His Spirit, and the [Pg 11] obstinate sinners have been exterminated by His judgment, ver. 3, 4. God's gracious presence affords them protection from their enemies, and from all tribulation and danger, ver. 5, 6.

The first part, in which Isaiah follows Micah (comp. the arguments in proof of originality in Micah, Vol. i., p. 413 ff.), has already been expounded on a former occasion. We have here only to answer the question, why it is that the Prophet opens his discourse with a proclamation of salvation borrowed from Micah? His object certainly was to render the minds of the people susceptible of the subsequent admonition and reproof, by placing at the head a promise which had already become familiar and precious to the people. The position which the Messianic proclamation occupies in Isaiah is altogether misunderstood if, with _Kleinert_ and _Ewald_, we assume that the passage does not, in Isaiah, belong to the real substance of the prophecy; that it is merely placed in front as a kind of text, the abuse and misinterpretation of which the Prophet meets in that which follows, so that the sense would be: the blessed time promised by former prophets will come _indeed_, but _only_ after severe, rigorous judgments upon all who had forsaken Jehovah. It is especially ver. 5 which militates against this interpretation, where, in the words: "Come ye and let us walk in the light of the Lord,"[1] the prophet gives an _express declaration_ as to the object of the description which he has placed in front, and expresses himself in regard to it in perfect harmony [Pg 12] with Heb. iv. 1: [Greek: phobêthômen oun mêpote kataleipomenês epangelias ... dokê tis ex humôn husterêkenai.] This shows, that after the manner of an evangelical preacher, and in conformity with his name, he wishes to allure to repentance by pointing to the great salvation of the future;--that the [Greek: êngike hê basileia tôn ouranôn] of the first part serves as a foundation to the [Greek: metanoeite oun] of the second.

The threatening of punishment contained in the second part is destitute of any particular reference. It bears a general character, comprehending the whole of the mischief with which the Lord is to visit the unfaithfulness of His people. Most thoroughly was the animating idea realized in the Roman catastrophe, the consequence of which is the helplessness which still presses upon the people. The preparatory steps were the decay of the people at the time of Ahaz--especially the Chaldean overthrow--and, generally, everything which the people had to suffer in the time of the dominion of the Assyrian, Chaldean, Medo-Persian, and Greek kingdoms. As none of these kingdoms were as yet on the stage, or in sight, it is quite natural that the threatening here keeps altogether within general terms; it was given to Isaiah himself afterwards to individualize it much more.

It is with the third part only that we have here more particularly to employ ourselves.

Ver. 2. "_In that day the Sprout of the Lord becomes for beauty and glory, and the fruit of the land for exaltation and ornament, to the escaped of Israel._"

Ver. 3. "_And it shall come to pass, he that was left in Zion, and was spared in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, every one that is written to life in Jerusalem._"

Ver. 4. "_When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall remove the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of right and the spirit of destruction._"

Ver. 5. "_And the Lord creates over the place of Mount Zion, and over her assemblies clouds by day and smoke, and the brightness of flaming fire by night, for above all glory is a covering._"

Ver. 6. "_And a tabernacle shall be for a shadow by day from the heat, and, for a refuge and covert from storm and from rain._"

Ver. 2. "_In that day_" _i.e._, not by any means _after_ the suffering, but _in the midst of it_, comp. chap. iii. 18; iv. 1, where, by [Pg 13] the words "in that day," contemporaneousness is likewise expressed. Parallel is chap. ix. 1 (2), where the people that walketh in darkness seeth a great light. According to Micah v. 2 (3) also, the people are given up to the dominion of the world's powers until the time that she who is bearing has brought forth. Inasmuch as the Messianic proclamation bears the same general comprehensive character as the threatening of punishment, and includes in itself beginning and end, the suffering may partly also reach into the Messianic time. It dismisses from its discipline those who are delivered up to it, gradually only, after they have become ripe for a participation in the Messianic salvation.--There cannot be any doubt that, by the "_Sprout of the Lord_" the Messiah is designated,--an explanation which we meet with so early as in the Chaldee Paraphrast ([Hebrew: bedna hhva ihi mwiHa dii lHdvh vliqr]), from which even _Kimchi_ did not venture to differ, which was in the Christian Church, too, the prevailing one, and which Rationalism was the first to give up. The Messiah is here quite in His proper place. The Prophet had, in chap. iii. 12-15, in a very special manner, derived the misery of the people from their bad rulers. What is now more rational, therefore, than that he should connect the salvation and prosperity likewise with the person of a Divine Ruler? comp. chap. i. 26. In the adjoining prophecies of Isaiah, especially in chaps. vii., ix., and xi., the person of the Messiah likewise forms the centre of the proclamation of salvation; so that, _a priori_, a mention of it must be expected here. To the same result we are led by the analogy of Micah; comp. Vol. i. p. 443-45, 449. _Farther_--The representation of the Messiah, under the image of a sprout or shoot, is very common in Scripture; comp. chap. xi. 1-10; liii. 2; Rev. v. 5. But of decisive weight are those passages in which precisely our word [Hebrew: cmH] occurs as a designation of the Messiah. The two passages, Jer. xxiii. 5: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and I raise unto David a righteous Sprout;" and xxxiii. 15: "In those days, and at that time, shall I cause the Sprout of righteousness to grow up unto David," may at once and plainly be considered as an _interpretation_ of the passage before us, and as a commentary upon it; and that so much the more that there, as well as here, all salvation is connected with this Sprout of Jehovah; comp. Jer. xxiii. 6: "In His days Judah [Pg 14] shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is His name whereby he shall be called: The Lord our righteousness." The two other passages, Zech. iii. 8: "Behold, I bring my servant _Zemach_," and vi. 12: "Behold, a man whose name is _Zemach_" are of so much the greater consequence that in them _Zemach_ (_i.e._, Sprout) occurs as a kind of _nomen proprium_, the sense of which is supposed as being known from former prophecies to which the Prophet all but expressly refers; or as _Vitringa_ remarks on these passages: "That man who, in the oracles of the preceding Prophets (Is. and Jer.) bears the name of 'Sprout.'" Of no less consequence, _finally_, is the parallel passage, chap. xxviii. 5: "In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people." The words [Hebrew: cbi] and [Hebrew: tpart] there meet us again. The same is there ascribed to the Lord which is here attributed to the Sprout of the Lord. That can be readily accounted for, only if the Sprout of the Lord be the Messiah. For the Messiah appears everywhere as the channel through which the Lord imparts to His Church all the fulness of His blessings, as the Immanuel by whom the promise given at the very threshold of the Old Testament: "I dwell in the midst of them," is most perfectly realized. "This is the name whereby He shall be called: The Lord our righteousness," says Jeremiah, in the passage quoted.--The "Sprout of the Lord" may designate either him whom the Lord causes to sprout, or him who has sprouted forth from the Lord, _i.e._, the Son of God. Against the latter interpretation it is objected by _Hoffmann_ (_Weissagung und Erfüllung._ Th. 1, S. 214): "[Hebrew: cmH] is an intransitive verb, so that [Hebrew: cmH] may be as well connected with a noun which says, who causes to sprout forth, as with one which says, whence the thing sprouts forth. Now it is quite obvious that, in the passage before us, the former case applies, and not the latter, inasmuch as one cannot say that something, or even some one, sprouts forth from Jehovah; it is only with a thing, not with a person, that [Hebrew: cmH] can be connected." But it is impossible to admit that this objection is well founded. The person may very well be conceived of as the soil from which the sprout goes forth. Yet we must, indeed, acknowledge that the Messiah is nowhere called a Sprout of David. But what decides in favour of the first view are the [Pg 15] parallel passages. In Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15, the Lord raises up to David a righteous Sprout, and causes Him to grow up unto David. Hence here, too, the Sprout will in that sense only be the Lord's, that he does not sprout forth out of Him, but through Him. In Zech. iii. 8 the Lord brings his servant _Zemach_; in Ps. cxxxii. 17, it is said: "There I cause a horn to sprout to David," and already in the fundamental passage, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5, which contains the first germ of our passage, David says: "For all my salvation and all my pleasure should He not make it to _sprout_ forth."--As the words "Sprout of the Lord" denote the heavenly origin of the Redeemer, so do the words [Hebrew: pri harC] the earthly one, the soil from which the Lord causes the Saviour to sprout up. These words are, by _Vitringa_ and others, translated: "the fruit of the earth," but the correct translation is "the fruit of the _land_." The passages, Num. xiii. 26: "And shewed them the fruit of the land;" and Deut. i. 25: "And they took in their hands of the fruit of the land, and brought it unto us, and brought us word again, and said, good is the land which the Lord our God doth give us,"--these two passages are, besides that under consideration, the only ones in which the phrase [Hebrew: pri harC] occurs; and there is here, no doubt, an allusion to them. The excellent natural fruit of ancient times is a type of the spiritual fruit. To the same result--that [Hebrew: harC] designates the definite land, that land which, in the preceding verses, in the description of the prevailing conniption, and of the divine judgments, was always spoken of,--to this result we are led by the fact also, that everywhere in the Old Testament where the contrariety of the divine and human origin of the Messiah is mentioned, the human origin is more distinctly qualified and limited. This is especially the case in those passages which, being dependent upon that before us, maybe considered as a commentary upon it; in Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15, where the Lord raises a Sprout unto _David_, and Zech. vi. 12, where the man whose name is _Zemach_ (Sprout) grows up out of its soil; comp. Heb.