THE DAUGHTERS OF ZION

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As for my people, a child is their governor, and women rule over them: O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and have confused thy paths.

The Lord hath stationed himself to plead,

And standeth to judge his people.

The Lord will enter into judgement

With the elders of his people, and the princes thereof. And ye-ye have eaten up the vineyard;

The spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye crush my people, And grind the face of the afflicted? Saith the Lord God of hosts.

§ 10. The wicked daughters of Jerusalem.-In this section we find a rhythmical fragment containing an attack upon and a threat against the grand and worldly ladies of the capital and the court enlarged by late prosaic additions. The catalogue of the women's ornaments is by no means in Isaiah's manner.

And the Lord said,

Because the daughters of Zion are haughty,

And walk with outstretched neck, and ogling eyes; Tripping along as they go and tinkling with their feet; Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion,

And he will make bare their shame.

[In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their anklets, and the little suns and the little moons, the eardrops and the arm-chains and the veils, the tiaras and the foot-chains, the girdles and the scent-bottles and the armlets, the seal rings and the nose jewels, the festal garments and the tunics and the shawls and the purses, the mirrors and the shifts, and the turbans and the overalls.]

And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be rottenness; and instead of curls baldness ; and instead of a mantle a girdle of sackcloth-branding instead of beauty.

[Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she shall sit, emptied out, upon the ground.]

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying,

We will eat our own bread,

And wear our own apparel:
Only let us be called by thy name;
Take thou away our reproach.

§ 11. The final redemption.-The conclusion of the sub-group is supposed by Professors Duhm and Cheyne to be entirely editorial. Style is certainly poor. Thought and expression are characteristic of the post-exilic period.

[In that day shall the sprouting of the Lord be for beauty and for glory, and the fruit of the land for pride and renown to the escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written for life in Jerusalem: when the Lord hath washed away the filth of the daughter of Zion, and hath purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by a spirit of judgement and a spirit of extermination. And the Lord will come, and there will be over the whole site of mount Zion and over her convocations a cloud by day and smoke with the shining of a flaming fire by night. And he will be as a shadow from the heat, and for a refuge and a shelter from storm and from rain (?).]

§ 12. The parable of the vineyard.—The fifth chapter of Isaiah seems to have no connexion or link with its neighbours on either side. Like the first chapter, it forms a short and small group by itself. But it was not written at once, for it is not a quite uniform whole. Moreover, its last six verses are now misplaced, and should be more correctly inserted elsewhere. This has here been done. The first twenty-four verses form two unequal parts. The first of these is the famous parable of the vineyard, both in style and rhythm in Isaiah's best manner. The date may be early in the reign of Ahaz.

I would sing of my Friend,

My Friend's song about his vineyard.

'My Friend hath a vineyard

On a fertile hill,

And he digged it, and gathered out the stones thereof,

And planted it with the choicest vine;

THE LORD'S VINEYARD

And he built a tower in the midst of it,

Yea, he hewed out a wine-vat therein :

And he looked that it should bring forth grapes,
And it brought forth wild grapes.

And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem,

And men of Judah,

Judge, I pray you, betwixt me,

And betwixt my vineyard.

What could have been done more to my vineyard,

That I have not done in it?

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Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, Brought it forth wild grapes?

'And now go to; I will tell you
What I will do to my vineyard:
I will take away the hedge thereof,
And it shall be eaten up;

And break down the wall thereof,
And it shall be trodden down :
And I will make a full end of it:
It shall not be pruned nor digged;

But there shall come up briers and thorns:

I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.'

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel,
And the men of Judah, the plant of his delight;

And he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed;
For righteousness, but behold, a cry!

§ 13. A sixfold woe.-The second part of the fifth chapter may date from the same period. It contains the six famous denunciations of social unrighteousness. I regret that both here and elsewhere I am unable to find room for the smallest commentary. Most earnestly would I commend Dr. Skinner's edition of the Book of Isaiah (two small volumes) to my readers.

WOE unto them that join house to house,

That lay field to field,

Till there is no place,

And they reside alone in the midst of the land!

Therefore in mine ears the Lord of hosts hath revealed:
Of a truth many houses shall be desolate,

Even great and fair ones, without inhabitant.
For ten yokes of vineyard shall yield but one bath,
And the seed of an homer shall yield but an ephah.
WOE unto them that rise up early in the morning,
That they may follow strong drink;

That sit late into the night,

While wine inflameth them!

And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe,
And wine, make up their feast:

But they regard not the work of the Lord,
Neither consider the operation of his hands.
Therefore my people goeth into captivity,
Because they have no knowledge:

And their honourable men are wasted by hunger,
And their multitude dried up with thirst.
Therefore Sheol hath enlarged its appetite,
And opened its mouth without measure:

And down goeth the pomp of Zion and her tumult,
And her uproar and all that is so jubilant in her!

[And the mean man is brought down, and the mighty man is humbled, and the eyes of the lofty are humbled: but the Lord of hosts is exalted through judgement, and the holy God sanctifieth himself through righteousness.

And lambs shall graze as on their pasture,

And on the waste places kids shall feed.

WOE unto them that draw iniquity with cords of hypocrisy, And sin as it were with a cart rope:

That say, 'Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it :

And let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it!'

WOE unto them that call evil good, and good evil;

That put darkness for light, and light for darkness,
That put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
WOE unto them that are wise in their own eyes,
And prudent in their own sight!

WOE unto them that are heroes to drink wine,
And men of strength to mingle strong drink :
Who justify the wicked for reward,

'WOE UNTO THEM

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And take away the righteousness of the righteous from him! Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble,

And as the hay sinketh in the flame,

So their root shall be as rottenness,

And their blossom shall go up as dust:

Because they have cast away the teaching of the Lord of hosts,

And despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

§14. The prophet's call.-As chapters ii to iv formed a little collection with a Messianic' close or appendix, so too do chapters vi, vii, viii, and the six opening verses of chapters ix. But the Messianic prophecy at the close of this collection may be from Isaiah's own pen. Professor Dubm thinks it is; Professor Cheyne thinks it is not. The collection opens with the inaugural vision which has already been quoted in Part I, p. 373. Its present place as the sixth chapter is an argument for the once independent existence of this smaller collection before being taken up into the larger collection of chapters i-xii. The last words of the vision some suppose to be a gloss. Yet Isaiah could never have believed in the complete destruction of the existing order; in his mind there must always have been the consoling conception of a remnant which should be the beginning and the source of better things. The metaphor of the last verse seems to mean that, even as when oak trees are cut down for a clearing, the stumps are burnt, so though a tenth of the people be left over from the imminent ruin, that teuth must again be purged by fire. It must be admitted that the words, a holy seed is the stock thereof,' limp awkwardly their intention is to make the metaphor mean that, as the stump of a felled tree may sprout again, so a holy seed will remain as the stock from which a new sprouting of the people will come. The words are wanting in the Greek translation. Note that the result of Isaiah's prophecy is rhetorically described as its purpose. Isaiah realized that in one sense his mission would fail; but the failure, like every other event in human history, was itself part and parcel of the divine plan-a scene in the drama of the divine purpose.

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above him stood seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one kept crying unto the other, and said,