picture of the perfect King (Messiah) of the kingdom of God, which formed the principal subject of this circle of expectations, and hence conferred on them their lasting name, was conceived by him with all the nobleness of his royal spirit, and drawn in wonderful truth with all the glow of his clear soul; and he was followed by other and similar prophets." "The ages subsequent to Isaiah are therefore already Messianic, i. e. Christian; at any rate in aspiration, in the true direction once given to their efforts, in the impulse, that is, to approach nearer and nearer to the clear image of perfection set before them."1

It is important to add, that as the eye of the prophet sweeps over the history of the Priest and the King of Christianity, we wonder not at his clear recognition of 'future life, of the dwellers in the dust waking up from their sleep with songs, with the freshness of immortality upon them, like the dew of the morning on the herbs of the field. A plain indication is given that the knowledge of future blessedness is intimately connected with the knowledge of a Redeemer. As the prophet contemplates the feast of the gospel, he declares that a victory shall be won over the last enemy.

"And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we

1 Ewald's History of Israel, vol. iv. 202, 204.

have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." 1

Here we have an outburst of exultant hope approaching the tone of the New Testament. The prophet leaps forward to a state of mind on this topic, as on those touching the Messiah, which impresses every one as truly evangelical. When we compare this passage with what we find in the Book of Ecclesiastes, 2 we feel the warmth and glow of Isaiah's utterance as compared with the dry, cold light of the wise king's expressions. Finally, Isaiah goes beyond previous prophets in the breadth and particularity of his predictions relative to the union of Jews and Gentiles in the worship of God. The passage we shall now quote furnishes a remarkable example of this. "It is here stated that a time should come, when all the heathen, subdued by the judgments of the Lord, should be converted to Him, and, being placed on an equality with Israel, with equal laws, would equally partake of the kingdom of God, and form a brotherly alliance for His worship." 3

"In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and He shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, and shall do sacrifice and oblation; yea, they shall vow a vow unto the Lord, and perform it. And the Lord shall smite Egypt: He shall smite and heal it: and they 2 Eccl. xii. 8-14. 3 Kitto's Biblical Cyclop., Art. Isaiah.

1 Isa. xxv. 6-9.

shall return even to the Lord, and He shall be entreated of them, and shall heal them. In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria; and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance." 1

The overthrow of idolatry is a subject described at the opening of Isaiah's prophecies, and referred to at the close. He and his brethren were apostles of monotheism, and the pure worship of Jehovah, as were the fathers of the Hebrew faith-Abraham the founder of the race, and Moses the founder of the nation. Against the polytheistic systems of other countries, and the polytheistic corruptions of Judah and Israel, Isaiah and the rest raised a steady voice of protest and warning. Faith in one God, a Divine inspiration rather than a mere Semitic instinct, sometimes appeared as a calm, devout conviction, the pious heart lovingly looking into the face of the Eternal; at other times, and in the case of Isaiah especially, it manifested itself in a holy war against "gods many and lords many;" controversy was waged against error and falsehood, and prophets anticipated apostles in contending earnestly for the faith once delivered unto the saints.

1 Isa. xix. 19-25.

2 Chap. ii.; lxvi.

231

CHAPTER XXI.

MICAH, NAHUM, ZEPHANIAH. 758-609

MICAH, a native of Moresheth, was contemporary

with Isaiah, and addressed his discourses to both Judah and Israel. It would appear that in the utterance of them he manifested much oriental excitement, and accompanied his words by symbolical acts. "Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning (or screeching) as the owls" (or ostriches).1 He lived in the past, and was familiar with the historical and the old. He speaks of Abraham and Jacob, of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam; and he recovers and preserves from oblivion an ancient record of the words of Balaam, striking at the root of superstition and presenting what is moral and spiritual in religion. "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" But no one before had ever unfolded the riches of Divine love with superior, or perhaps equal, force and beauty, in a succinct and easily to be remembered form. "Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." 1 The progress of

revelation appears not only in the addition of new truths. but in the new and varied repetition of old ones; a fresh, succinct, and striking expression of an ancient fundamental principle of religion is a clear gain for any age to which it is vouchsafed. Then follows a strain of devotion, the echo of which is caught and repeated seven hundred years afterwards, as the father of John the Baptist rejoices over his new-born son.2 Micah also foretold approaching invasion, Israel's dispersion, Jerusalem's destruction, and the judgments to be inflicted on the destroyers, together with the brighter days which were in store for the captive people. 3

He

But the most remarkable of the prophetic utterances of Micah is one perfectly new, in which he says, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." "4 thus predicts the birth, in the little town of Bethlehem, of One who would be a great ruler, and whose existence went back to distant ages-a prophetic announcement which surely, as it came in the age when Messianic prophecy reached the zenith of its glory, would be connected by thoughtful minds with " the Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of peace," who had been revealed by Isaiah.

Nahum the Elkoshite5 was the last of the Israelitish prophets. He comes in the rear of the august 1 Micah vii. 18, 19. 2 Chap. vii. 20; Luke i. 72, 73.

3 Micah i. 9-16; v. 7—9; vii. 8—10. 5 Some place Elkosh in Galilee; others in tomb is shown, in which he is said to be buried. probable.

4 Chap. v. 2. Assyria, where a The first is most