Promises of A. M. cir. 3244. B. C. cir. 760. Anno Olymp. Quintæ I. Ante U. C. 7. a b ISAIAH. e restoration. A. M. cir. 3244. * purely purge away thy dross, and her converts with right- B. C. cir. 760. and take away all thy tin: с 26 And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward d thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city. 27 Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, a Heb. according to pureness.- b Jer. vi. 29. ix. 7. Mal. iii. 3.-c Jer. xxxiii. 7. d Zech. viii. 3. e Or, they that return of her. Job xxxi. 3. Ps. i. 6. v. 6. Ixxii. dregs thereof," the thickest sediment of the strong ingredients mingled with it, "all the ungodly of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.” R. D. Kimchi says, "The current coin was adulterated with brass, tin, and other metals, and yet was circulated as good money. The wine also was adulterated with water in the taverns, and sold not withstanding for pure wine." Verse 23. Companions of thieves—“ associates "] The Septuagint, Vulgate, and four MSS. read 27 chabrey, without the conjunction vau. Verse 24. Ah, I will ease me-" Aha! I will be eased"] Anger, arising from a sense of injury and affront, especially from those who, from every consideration of duty and gratitude, ought to have behaved far otherwise, is an uneasy and painful sensation and revenge, executed to the full on the offenders, removes that uneasiness, and consequently is pleasing and quieting, at least for the present. Ezekiel, chap. v. 13, introduces God expressing himself in the same manner : "And mine anger shall be fully accomplished; And I will make my fury rest upon them; And I will give myself ease." This is a strong instance of the metaphor called anthropopathia, by which, throughout the Scriptures, as well the historical as the poetical parts, the sentiments, sensations, and affections, the bodily faculties, qualities, and members, of men, and even of brute animals, are attributed to God, and that with the utmost liberty and latitude of application. The foundation of this is obvious; it arises from necessity; we have no idea of the natural attributes of God, of his pure essence, of his manner of existence, of his manner of acting; when therefore we would treat on these subjects, we find ourselves forced to express them by sensible images. But necessity leads to beauty; this is true of metaphor in general, and in particular of this kind of metaphor, which is used with great elegance and sublimity in the sacred poetry; and, what is very remarkable, in the grossest instances of the application of it, it is generally the most striking and the most sublime. The reason seems to be this: when the images are taken from the superior faculties of the human nature, from the purer and more generous affections, and applied to God, we are apt to acquiesce in the notion; we overlook the metaphor, and take it as a proper attribute; eousness. Anno Olymp. Quinta L Ante U. C. 7. 28 And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed. but when the idea is gross and offensive, as in this passage of Isaiah, where the impatience of anger and the pleasure of revenge is attributed to God, we are immediately shocked at the application; the impropriety strikes us at once; and the mind, casting about for something in the divine nature analogous to the image, lays hold on some great, obscure, vague idea, which she endeavours to comprehend, and is lost in immensity and astonishment. See De Sacr. Poësi Hebr. Præl. xvi., sub. fin., where this matter is treated and illustrated by examples. Verse 25. I will turn my hand upon thee] So the common Version; and this seems to be a metaphor taken from the custom of those who, when the metal is melted, strike off the scoria with their hand previously to its being poured out into the mould. I have seen this done with the naked hand, and no injury whatever sustained. Purge away thy dross-"In the furnace"] The text has a cabber, which some render "as with soap;" as if it were the same with n keborith; so Kimchi; but soap can have nothing to do with the purifying of metals. Others, according to purity," or "purely," as our Version. Le Clerc conjectured that the true reading is n kechur, “as in the furnace;" see Ezek. xxii. 18, 20. Dr. Durell proposes only a transposition of letters to the same sense; and so likewise Archbishop Secker. That this is the true reading is highly probable. Verse 26. I will restore] “This,” says Kimchi, "shall be in the days of the Messiah, in which all the wicked shall cease, and the remnant of Israel shall neither do iniquity, nor speak lies." What a change must this be among Jews! Afterward-" And after this"] The Septuagint, Syriac, Chaldee, and eighteen MSS., and one of my own, very ancient, add the conjunction › vau, AND. Verse 27. With judgment-"In judgment"] By the exercise of God's strict justice in destroying the obdurate (see ver. 28), and delivering the penitent in righteousness; by the truth and faithfulness of God in performing his promises." Verse 29. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks"For ye shall be ashamed of the ilexes"] Sacred groves were a very ancient and favourite appendage of idolatry. They were furnished with the temple of the god to whom they were dedicated, with altars, images, and every thing necessary for performing the various rites of worship offered there; and were the garden that hath no water. a Ezek. xxxii. 21.- b Ch. xliii. 17. scenes of many impure ceremonies, and of much abominable superstition. They made a principal part of the religion of the old inhabitants of Canaan; and the Israelites were commanded to destroy their groves, among other monuments of their false worship. The Israelites themselves became afterwards very much addicted to this species of idolatry. "When I had brought them into the land, And there they presented the provocation of their offerings; And there they placed their sweet savour; Ezek. xx. 28. "On the tops of the mountains they sacrifice; Of what particular kinds the trees here mentioned are, cannot be determined with certainty. In regard to x ellah, in this place of Isaiah, as well as in Hosea, Celsius (Hierobot.) understands it of the terebinth, because the most ancient interpreters render it so; in the first place the Septuagint. He quotes eight places; but in three of these eight places the copies vary, some having pvc, the oak, instead of repeẞiveos, the terebinth or turpentine tree. And he should have told us, that these same seventy render it in sixteen other places by cpvc, the oak; so that their authority is really against him; and the Septuagint, "stant pro quercu," contrary to what he says at first setting out. Add to this that Symmachus, Theodotion, and Aquila generally render it by ¿pvc, the oak; the latter only once rendering it by repeßireos, the terebinth. His other arguments seem to me not very conclusive; he says, that all the qualities of allah agree to the terebinth, that it grows in mountainous countries, that it is a strong tree, long-lived, large and high, and deciduous. All these qualities agree just as well to the oak, against which he contends; and he actually attributes them to the oak in the very next section. But I think neither the oak nor the terebinth will do in this place of Isaiah, from the last circumstance which he mentions, their being deciduous, where the prophet's design seems to me to require an evergreen, other wise the casting of its leaves would be nothing out of the common established course of nature, and no proper image of extreme distress and total desolation, parallel to that of a garden without water, that is, shall be equally overthrown. 31 And the strong shall be b as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them. cOr, and his work. A. M. cir. 3244. B. C. cir. 760. Anno Olymp. Quintæ I. Ante U. C. 7. wholly burnt up and destroyed. An ancient, who was an inhabitant and a native of this country, understands it in like manner of a tree blasted with uncommon and immoderate heat; velut arbores, cum frondes æstu torrente decusserunt. Ephrem Syr. in loc., edit. Assemani. Compare Ps. i. 4, Jer. xvii. 8. Upon the whole I have chosen to make it the ilex, which word Vossius, Etymolog., derives from the Hebrew x allah, that whether the word itself be rightly rendered or not, I might at least preserve the propriety of the poetic image.-L. By the ilex the learned prelate means the holly, which, though it generally appear as a sort of shrub, grows, in a good soil, where it is unmolested, to a considerable height. I have one in my own garden, rising three stems from the root, and between twenty and thirty feet in height. It is an evergreen. Verse 29. For they shall be ashamed—" For ye shall be ashamed"] wan teboshu, in the second person, Vulgate, Chaldee, three MSS., one of my own, ancient, and one edition; and in agreement with the rest of the sentence. Verse 30. Whose leaf-" Whose leaves"] Twentysix of Kennicott's, twenty-four of De Rossi's, one ancient, of my own, and seven editions, read y aleyha, in its full and regular form. This is worth remarking, as it accounts for a great number of anomalies of the like kind which want only the same authority to rectify them. As a garden that hath no water-" A garden wherein is no water."] In the hotter parts of the eastern countries, a constant supply of water is so absolutely necessary for the cultivation and even for the preservation and existence of a garden, that should it want water but for a few days, every thing in it would be burnt up with the heat, and totally destroyed. There is therefore no garden whatever in those countries but what has such a certain supply, either from some neighbouring river, or from a reservoir of water collected from springs, or filled with rain water in the proper season, in sufficient quantity to afford ample provision for the rest of the year. Moses, having described the habitation of man newly created as a garden planted with every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food, adds, as a circumstance necessary to complete the idea of a garden, that it was well supplied with water, "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden." Gen. ii. 10: see also xiii. 10. That the reader may have a clear notion of this matter, it will be necessary to give some account of the management of their gardens in this respect. "Damascus," says Maundrell, p. 122, "is encompassed with gardens, extending no less, according to common estimation, than thirty miles round; which makes it look like a city in a vast wood. The gardens are thick set with fruit-trees of all kinds, kept fresh and verdant by the waters of the Barrady (the Chrysorrhoas of the ancients), which supply both the gardens and city in great abundance. This river, as soon as it issues out from between the cleft of the mountain before mentioned into the plain, is immediately divided into three streams; of which the middlemost and biggest runs directly to Damascus, and is distributed to all the cisterns and fountains of the city. The other two (which I take to be the work of art) are drawn round, one to the right hand, and the other to the left, on the borders of the gardens, into which they are let as they pass by little currents, and so dispersed all over the vast wood, insomuch that there is not a garden but has a fine quick stream running through it. The Barrady is almost wholly drunk up by the city and gardens. What small part of it escapes is united, as I was informed, in one channel again on the south-east side of the city; and, after about three or four hours' course, finally loses itself in a bog there, without ever arriving at the sea. This was likewise the case in former times, as Strabo, lib. xvi., Pliny, lib. v. 18, testify; who say, "that this river was expended in canals, and drunk up by watering the place." "The best sight," says the same Maundrell, p. 39, "that the palace of the emir of Beroot, anciently Berytus, affords, and the worthiest to be remembered, is the orange garden. It contains a large quadrangular plat of ground, divided into sixteen lesser squares, four in a row, with walks between them. The walks are shaded with orange trees of a large spreading size. Every one of these sixteen lesser squares in the garden was bordered with stone; and in the stone-work were troughs, very artificially contrived, for conveying the water all over the garden; there being little outlets cut at every tree for the stream as it passed by to flow out and water it." The royal gardens at Ispahan are watered just in the same manner, according to Kempfer's description, Amon. Exot. p. 193. of water made in the East. I said, I will water my garden, And I will abundantly moisten my border: This gives us the true meaning of the following elegant proverb, Prov. xxi. 1:— "The heart of the king is like the canals of waters in the hand of JEHOVAH; Whithersoever it pleaseth him, he inclineth it." The direction of it is in the hand of JEHOVAH, as the distribution of the water of the reservoir through the garden by different canals is at the will of the gardener. "I made me gardens, and paradises; And I planted in them all kinds of fruit-trees. To water with them the grove flourishing with trees." Maundrell, p. 88, has given a description of the remains, as they are said to be, of these very pools made by Solomon, for the reception and preservation of the waters of a spring, rising at a little distance from them; which will give us a perfect notion of the contrivance and design of such reservoirs. "As for above each other; being so disposed that the waters the pools, they are three in number, lying in a row of the uppermost may descend into the second, and those of the second into the third. Their figure is This gives us a clear idea of the palgey ing to about ninety paces. In their length there is quadrangular, the breadth is the same in all, amountmayim, mentioned in the first psalm, and other places of Scripture, "the divisions of waters," the waters some difference between them; the first being about distributed in artificial canals; for so the phrase pro-hundred, and the third, two hundred and twenty. one hundred and sixty paces long, the second, two perly signifies. The prophet Jeremiah, chap. xvii. 8, has imitated, and elegantly amplified, the passage of the Psalmist above referred to: They are all lined with wall, and plastered; and contain a great depth of water." The immense works which were made by the ancient kings of Egypt, for recovering the waters of the Nile when it overflowed, for such uses, are well known. But there never was a more stupendous work of this kind than the reservoir of Saba, or Merab, in Arabia Felix. According to the tradition of the country, it was the work of Balkis, that queen of Sheba who visited Solomon. It was a vast lake "He shall be like a tree planted by the water side, And which sendeth forth her roots to the aqueduct. She shall not fear, when the heat cometh ; But her leaf shall be green; And in the year of drought she shall not be anxious, Neither shall she cease from bearing fruit.” From this image the son of Sirach, Ecclus. xxiv. formed by the collection of the waters of a torrent in 30, 31, has most beautifully illustrated the influence and the increase of religious wisdom in a well pre-tains, a very high mole or dam was built. The water a valley, where, at a narrow pass between two moun pared heart. "I also come forth as a canal from a river, And as a conduit flowing into a paradise. of the lake so formed had near twenty fathom depth; and there were three sluices at different heights, by which, at whatever height the lake stood, the plain Prophecy concerning the kingdom of the Messiah, and the conversion of the Gentile world, 1-5. Great wickedness and idolatry of the unbelieving Jews, 6-9. Terrible consternation that will seize the wicked, who shall in vain seek for rocks and mountains to hide them from the face of God in the day of his judgments, 10-17. Total destruction of idolatry in consequence of the establishment of Messiah's kingdom, 18-21. An exhortation to put no confidence in man, 22. The prophecy contained in the second, third, and fourth chapters makes one continued discourse. The first five verses of chap. ii. foretel the kingdom of Messiah, the conversion of the Gentiles, and their admission into it. From the sixth verse to the end of the second chapter is foretold the punishment of the unbelieving Jews for their idolatrous practices, their confidence in their own strength, and distrust of God's protection; and moreover the destruction of idolatry, in consequence of the establishment of Messiah's kingdom. The whole of the third chapter, with the first verse of the fourth, is a prophecy of the calamities of the Babylonian invasion and captivity; with a particular amplification of the distress of the proud and luxurious daughters of Sion; chap. iv. 2-6 promises to the remnant, which shall have escaped this severe purgation, a future restoration to the favour and protection of God. This prophecy was probably delivered in the time of Jotham, or perhaps in that of Uzziah, as Isaiah is said to have prophesied in his reign; to which time Bot any of his prophecies is so applicable as that of these chapters. The seventh verse of the second, and the latter part of the third chapter, plainly point out times in which riches abounded, and luxury and delicacy prevailed. Plenty of silver and gold could only arise from their commerce; particularly from that part of it which was carried on by the Red Sea. This circumstance seems to confine the prophecy within the limits above mentioned, while the port of Elath was in their hands: it was lost under Ahaz, and never recovered. NOTES ON CHAP. II. Verse 2. In the last days—“In the latter days"] "Wherever the latter times are mentioned in Scrip- | ture, the days of the Messiah are always meant," says Kimchi on this place: and, in regard to this place, nothing can be more clear and certain. And the mountain of the Lord's house, says the same author, is Mount Moriah, on which the temple was built. The prophet Micah, chap. iv. 1-4, has repeated this prophecy of the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, and of its progress to universality and perfection, in the same words with little and hardly any material variation: for as he did not begin to prophesy till Jotham's time, and this seems to be one of the first of Isaiah's prophecies, I suppose Micah to have taken it from hence. The variations, as I said, are of no great importance. Ver. 2. x hu, after xw venissa, a word of some emphasis, may be supplied from Micah, if dropped in Isaiah. An ancient MS. has it here in the margin. It has in like manner been lost in chap. liii. 4 (see note on the place), and in Ps. xxii. 29, where it is supplied by the Syriac and Septuagint. Instead of a bɔ col haggoyim, all the nations, Micah has only y ammim, peoples ; where the Syriac has y col ammim, all peoples, as probably it ought to be. Ver. 3. For the second ↳ el, read ↳ veel, seventeen MSS., one of my own, ancient, two editions, the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, Chaldee, and so Micah iv. 2. Ver. 4. Micah adds Pad rachok, afar off, which the Syriac also reads in this parallel place of Isaiah. It is also to be observed that Micah has improved the passage by adding a verse, or sentence, for imagery and expression worthy even of the elegance of Isaiah :— "And they shall sit every man under his vine, And under his fig-tree, and none shall affright them: For the mouth of JEHOVAH, God of hosts, hath spoken it." The description of well-established peace, by the image of "beating their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks," is very poetical. The Roman poets have employed the same image, Martial, xiv. 34. "Falx ex ense." Pax me certa ducis placidos curvavit in usus: "Sweet peace has transformed me. I was once the property of the soldier, and am now the property of the husbandman." The prophet Joel, chap. iii. 10, hath reversed it, and applied it to war prevailing over peace:— "Beat your ploughshares into swords, And your pruning-hooks into spears." And so likewise the Roman poets: 66 -Non ullus aratro Dignus honos: squalent abductis arva colonis, Bella diu tenuere viros: erat aptior ensis "War has lasted long, and the sword is preferred to the plough. The bull has given place to the warhorse; the weeding hooks to pikes; and the harrow pins have been manufactured into helmets." The prophet Ezekiel, chap. xvii. 22-24, has presignified the same great event with equal clearness, though in a more abstruse form, in an allegory; from an image, suggested by the former part of the prophecy, happily introduced, and well pursued: "Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH : I myself will take from the shoot of the lofty cedar, of the kingdom of Christ. A. M. cir. 3244. 4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. g 5 O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD. 6 Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished xlvi. 9. Hos. ii. 18. Zech. ix. 10.-'Or, scythes.-Ps. lxxii. 3, 7.-h Eph. v. 8. On the lofty mountain of Israel will I plant it ; And under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing; In the shadow of its branches shall they dwell: Have dried up the green tree; And have made the dry tree to flourish: I JEHOVAH have spoken it, and will do it." The word 'n venathatti, in this passage, ver. 22, as the sentence now stands, appears incapable of being reduced to any proper construction or sense. None of the ancient Versions acknowledge it, except Theodotion and the Vulgate; and all but the latter vary very much from the present reading of this clause. Houbigant's correction of the passage, by reading instead of venathatti, пp veyoneketh, and a tender scion,—which is not very unlike it, perhaps better pɔr veyonek, with which the adjective π rach will agree without alteration,-is ingenious and probable; and I have adopted it in the above translation.-L. Verse 3. To the house] The conjunction vau is added by nineteen of Kennicott's, thirteen of De Rossi's MSS., one of my own, and two editions, the Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate, Arabic, and some copies of the Targum; AND to the house. It makes the sentence more emphatic. He will teach us of his ways] Unless God grant a revelation of his will, what can we know? We will walk in his paths] Unless we purpose to walk in the light, of what use can that light be to us? For out of Zion shall go forth the law] In the house of God, and in his ordinances only, can we expect to hear the pure doctrines of revelation preached. 1. God alone can give a revelation of his own will. 2. We must use the proper means in order to know this will. 3. We should know it in order to do it. 4. We should do it in order to profit by it. 5. He who will not walk in the light when God vouchsafes it, shall be shut up in everlasting darkness. 6. Every man should help his neighbour to attain that light, life, and felicity: "Come ye, and And I myself will plant it on a mountain high and let us walk in the light of the Lord." eminent. Verse 4. Neither shall they learn war any more.] |