019. I. The Young Prophet Of Jerusalem

I THE YOUNG PROPHET OF JERUSALEM

While Amos and Hosea were executing in the northern kingdom the mission with which God had entrusted them, a youth was approaching manhood in the city of Jerusalem who was rarely qualified in personal endowment and by favoring conditions to enter upon a similar work in Judah, and to carry it to a higher stage of development. The peer of these men of God in loyalty, devotion, and courage, he was so situated that a much wider sphere of service was open to him. If not related to the royal family, he was at least of gentle blood, and entitled by general consent to a place of dignity and influence at the court and among the people. During his whole career he played the part of a leader in political as well as religious and social affairs. As a loyal citizen of Jerusalem, he was peculiarly fitted to perceive and express the important relation of the holy city to the plan of God, unfolding for the nation. That his natural abilities were of no ordinary character is proved by the dignity, vigor, and beauty which characterize all his utterances. It is entirely probable, however, that he availed himself of all the educational resources of a brilliant era. His boyhood was during a happy period of Judah’s history, when the energetic and enterprising Uzziah was on the throne of Judah. This king, enthroned when but a youth, enabled his people to recover speedily from the depression to which the stubborn conceit of his father Amaziah (2 Kings 14:8-14) had reduced them. With skill and judgment he developed Judah’s natural resources, strengthened her defenses, and opened many avenues of wealth. He compelled the petty nations round about to resume their old relation as tributaries. He even won back the port of Elath, on the eastern arm of the Red Sea, secured a navy of “ships of Tarshish” (Isaiah 2:16), and resumed the traffic with South Arabia which Solomon had fostered. He thus made his little kingdom secure, powerful, and prosperous, and gave his people renewed confidence in themselves and in their future. Judah, under King Uzziah, became a fair counterpart of Israel under King Jeroboam II, whose reign was practically contemporaneous. No wonder that the soul of the young Judean prophet was stirred by the sight of evils similar to those which had kindled the prophetic ardor of Amos,—a thoughtless greed for wealth, a consequent abuse of power and opportunity, a forgetfulness of moral standards, all combined with a scrupulousness for religious forms and with a pretense of loyalty to Jehovah,—and that his study of the utterances of Amos and Hosea to the northern people prepared him for a prompt consecration of himself as God’s spokesman to the people of Judah. By his own statement (Isaiah 6:1) the prophet lets us know that it was in the year of King Uzziah’s death that he began his public career. He then definitely recognized the duty imposed upon him by his divine sovereign. He was then a young man, but probably married. He was not immature nor lacking in prestige. On the contrary, his earliest utterances breathe the same serene and thoughtful confidence, and exhibit all the characteristic qualities, which we find in the impassioned addresses of forty years later. His growth during these years was not so much an advancement in social position nor oratorical skill, nor even in fundamental ideas, as in his grasp of all the factors which were to be combined to carry out the divine plan, and in his emphasis of those which were of supreme importance. During the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the prophet was a prominent factor in the affairs of Judah, recognized, although sometimes opposed, by both king and people. He applied the touchstone of Jehovah’s approval to their pursuits and plans. Like his prophetic predecessors, he rebuked the ungodliness made manifest in the superstition, formalism, and self-esteem of the people of Judah, and denounced the social evils which were spreading among them. He advanced beyond Amos or Hosea in his application of the principles of prophecy to national questions. Partly, perhaps, because of his intimacy with those who ruled the state, partly because of his habit of mind, he was a statesman as well as a reformer. He constantly urged a national policy based upon the will of Jehovah. He thus restored the advisory function of the prophet of Jehovah, so honored in the life of Elisha, and gave it a broader definition in the light of the higher prophetic ideals of his own age. He was more, however, than reformer or statesman. That which gave him power in either capacity, and transformed his utterances from nothing more than a skilful exhibition of rhetorical power into stirring and searching appeals to conscience, was his wonderful grasp of the nature and purposes of God, and his insistence upon the recognition of God in every act of man. From his inaugural vision of Jehovah he was a student of the divine nature, plan, and methods, transmitting to his disciples a well-ordered survey of the relations of God, man, and the universe, which is entitled to recognition as the first true theology which we can trace.

It would be impossible for the student of prophecy to understand the life and work of this uncrowned king of men by reading the Book of Isaiah in the present order of chapters. When his utterances were first reduced to written form,—in part, perhaps, by the great teacher himself, in part by his disciples,—they circulated among the faithful in Israel in more or less fragmentary form. Disciples here and there made collections of these published prophecies, arranging them in little groups, each bearing on a special theme. It thus happened that when the Isaianic writings were all gathered into one roll by some one who probably lived long after the prophet had passed away, their order was distinctively topical. Chapters 1 to 12, for instance, form a little volume of discourses of very different dates on Judah and Jerusalem. Chapters 13 to 27 seem to have been grouped together because they deal with various foreign nations. The historical student of to-day is forced to ignore the present order of chapters or discourses altogether. Nor does he seek to arrange them in the probable order of composition. It is not unlikely that the sixth chapter, which relates the inaugural vision of the prophet, was written many years after the actual experience, yet the one who seeks to reproduce and interpret the prophet’s career will study it first of all. Similarly, the first chapter, which to-day makes a forceful introduction to the book of Isaiah’s prophecies, was possibly written almost forty years after the opening of his ministry. It is a capital résumé of the earlier work of the prophet, and can best be treated as such.

Under the generally acknowledged principle that the prophecies can most helpfully be read and studied in connection with the historical period to which each one refers, a number of chapters in the Book of Isaiah are at once relegated to the time of the Babylonian exile or later. Whether the prophet Isaiah uttered these predictions, or some one else, does not affect this necessity for studying them in connection with the history of the exile and the return. Only then do they become intelligible and convey to our minds the impression intended by him who produced them. In accordance with this principle, not only do we omit from present consideration chapters 40 to 66, but also chapters 13 and 14, 24 to 27, and, with less assurance, chapters 21, 34, and 35. The remaining thirty chapters can be arranged with considerable certainty into two groups of prophecies which relate to events during the actual lifetime of the prophet. The public career of Isaiah was not less than forty years in length. The year 701 B. C. is the last year which we can definitely determine. It would seem incredible that even sixty-six chapters should represent the intense activity of those years, did we not remember that a paragraph or chapter often summarizes in briefest possible form the leading ideas of a year or more of active ministry. From the material preserved to us we might infer that his busiest years were at the opening and at the close of his prophetic life, for the greater number of these chapters belong to the years 739 to 732, and 705 to 701 B. C. The first group includes about fourteen chapters, and reflects the earlier activity of Isaiah down to the fall of the northern kingdom (722 B. C.), a period of seventeen or eighteen years. From the standpoint of prophetic biography these chapters are full of interest. Aside from the story of his consecration to his exalted office, they reproduce his earliest ministry, when his message was of judgment upon the ungodliness and crime prevailing in Judah,—a message parallel in many respects to those of Amos and Hosea, and doubtless inspired in part by them. About 735 B. C. came the crisis which gave occasion for his first appearance as a political adviser. The weak and timid King Ahaz, being besieged in his own capital by the allied armies of the kings of Northern Israel and Syria, secretly meditated a deliverance by becoming a vassal of the all-powerful king of Assyria, the famous Tiglath-pileser. The prophet appealed in vain to prince and people to show their trust in Jehovah by relying upon him alone in their emergency, and rejecting all temporary expedients for safety. Disappointing as his failure was, it had important results, which affected the methods and principles of his subsequent ministry. The most obvious consequence was also, in all probability, the most important. Since the nation as such would not heed his message, he seems to have retired from public activity and given himself to the instruction of such kindred spirits as he could gather round him. Thus the ten years of comparative silence which followed were, after all, years of most influential service, and the period as a whole was an essential preparation for the outwardly more glorious achievements of later years. Our study of the life and teachings of the prophet as portrayed in his own utterances will naturally commence with his reminiscences of that solemn hour when his Lord was first revealed as a king, who called for a messenger to men, and accepted him.