154 THE PENTATEUCH A DIVINE AND GENUINE BOOK. have not been later additions, or explanations, written into these books by inspired men. The last part of Deut. was undoubtedly thus written by a later hand. We do not claim that there have not crept into these books a few later interpolations by uninspired copyists: it may be hard to decide, for instance whether verse 9 of Deut. iii. chapter, and the clause, “Is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon,” of the 11-verse of that chapter were written by Moses, or whether by a later inspired or uninspired hand. This is not important. The Pentateuch is a Divine and genuine book. [ 155 } 66 CHAPTER SIXTH. God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the Prophets by divers portions and in divers manners;" [Heb. i. 1.] Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament, con tinued. Let us now examine the genuineness of Isaiah. These destructive critics banish the Divine factor from ths early history of men and from the history of the Israelites to begin with, and also from the preparation and writing of these books. They reduce the records to pious frauds, and make Christ and the Apostles quote and use these pious frauds as genuine scriptures. They leave the most important periods of the Jewish nation without a history. According to them, neither Moses, David nor Solomon left a scrap of history, which is inconceivable. The neglect of the laws and ritual service is not sufficient as we have seen to prove its non-existence. They adduce the slight difference in style between the Pentateuch and the Prophets to prove that there could not have been so much time between their composition. The critics assume that the literary style varied as fast among that people and in that age as it does among the Western nations in this age, and hence because they find less difference between the style of the earlier and later writers than they do between Chaucer and Shakespeare, therefore they assume that there was less time between the earlier and later writers of the books of the Old Testament than there was between Chaucer and Shakespeare. But everything is now, and was then, much more fixed and unchangable in those eastern countries than it is in the west. There is not sufficient ground for their assumption. It is claimed by the critics that Isaiah did not write the book of Isaiah, as we now have it, but that it is made up of various addresses of Isaiah, to which some one made 156 THE THEORY OF TWO ISAIAHS. additions and added the last twenty seven chapters, during the exile in Babylon. Their principal reasons for this conclusion are; 1.—The standpoint of the writer of the last part is from Babylon; for he sees his own land in ruins, see Is. lxiv. 10, 11. 2. He mentions the future deliverer, Cyrus by name. xliv 28; xlv. 1. 3. The style is different. 4.—The oldest arrangement of the order of the books by the Jews, puts Isaiah after Ezekiel. Reply to these points, in brief. 1.-Isaiah may have made prophecies of the Babylonish captivity when in Judea. His allusions to Palestine are so numerous as to show a residence there. 2.—In 1-Ki. xiii. 2, we have a prophecy of king Josiah by name, about 350 years before its fulfilment as recorded in 2-Ki. xxiii. 15, 16. It is also said that this name, Koresh, (ruler in Chaldee) was appropriated by Cyrus after he saw this prophecy. 3. The difference in style would be accounted for in part by the fact that the first part was written in Isaiah's youth and the last part in his old age, and partly by the fact that the last part is highly poetical, and in the form of visions. 4. The Jews did not follow the order of time exclusively in arranging the Old Testament books, but the subject matter determined their order as well as time. Coming now to the argument for the genuineness of the prophecy of Isaiah, we will examine first the external testimony. 1. In Ecclesiasticus which was written at least 250 years B.C. the writer, in reviewing the history of the kings and prophets of Israel and Judah, comes to Hezekiah and says, xlviii: 24, 25, "In his time Sennacherib came up but the Holy One heard his people out of heaven and delivered them by the ministry of Isaiah. For Hezekiah had done the thing that pleased the Lord and was strong in the ways of David his father, as Isaiah, the prophet, who was great and faithful in vision had commanded him; in his time the sun went backward, and he lengthened the king's life. He saw by an excellent spirit what should come to pass at the last, and he comforted them that mourned in Sion. He showed what should come to pass forever, and the secret things or ever they came." This language at the close can only refer to the latter part of Isaiah's prophecy. The very words of a part of the last chapters of Isaiah are quoted. The author of Ecclesiasticus was a pious and learned Jew, living and EXTERNAL TESTIMONY TO THE INTEGRITY OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. 157 writing at least 250 B.C., and yet he knew nothing of a second Isaiah. 2. Josephus, (born A.D. 37), in his Antiquities of the Jews, (book xi. Chap. 1) quoted from 2-Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23 and from Ezra i. 2; "Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord God of heaven hath given to me all the kingdoms of the earth and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah." Josephus says, "This was known to Cyrus by his reading the book which Isaiah had left behind him of his prophecies, for this prophet said that God had thus spoken to him in a secret vision," referring to Is. xliv. 28. This is in the last part of Isaiah. This, Josephus says was foretold by Isaiah 140 years before the temple was destroyed, etc. Josephus knew nothing of a second Isaiah. 3. Christ and the Apostles quote thirty five times from Isaiah, and eight times from these last chapters by name. See Luke iv. 17, "And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias, and when he had opened the book, etc." he read the first two verses of the lxi. chapter of Isaiah. In Acts viii. 28, the eunuch, "Sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet," "The place of the scripture which he read," was Is. liii. 7, 8. In Rom. x. 16, Paul quotes for Is. liii. 1 with the words "Esaias saith," and in the 20-verse, "Esaias is very bold, and saith," quoting from Is. lxv. 1, 2. Yet Paul quotes in the same way from the first part of Isaiah, see Rom. ix. 27, 29. Paul was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and was taught all that the Jews knew about their sacred books, and yet he knew nothing about a second Isaiah,-"The great unknown," as the critics call him. 4. In the lists of the books of the Old Testament, in Josephus and other Jewish writings-Isaiah is one distinct book, and is placed first among the greater prophets. Let us next look at the internal testimony for the genuineness of Isaiah. 1. The stand point of the writer shows that the last part was written before the exile into Babylon. The language of xliii. 22-24, is inappropriate if addressed to poor exiles. The evil spoken of in lvii. 1, is not past, it is approaching. The language of lvii. 4, 5 is entirely inappropriate if spoken to a people who are in the midst of the plains of Babylon, but it is exactly fitted to a people dwelling in Palestine. So also the language of lviii. 1-13 is entirely inappropriate if spoken to the captive Jews in Babylon, but it is exactly fitted to the condition of the people in Isaiah's time. So too, the words of lxv. 2-7 are not fitted 158 INTERNAL PROOFS OF THE 66 66 to the condition of the Jews in Babylon, but to their condition in Isaiah's time. Eating swine's flesh," with the 'broth of abominable things in their vessels," is not a Babylonish custom, but an Egyptian one. Again, there is no record that the Jews went into gross idolatry in Babylon, making idols of wood and of gold such as they are charged with doing in Is. xl. 19, 20; xli. 7; xlvi. 6, 7; xlviii. 1-5. But if we read 2-Ki. xxi. Chap. and 2-Chron. xxxiii. xxxiv. chapters, we find that the passages referred to above in the last part of Isaiah are exactly descriptive of the gross idolatry of the Jews in Isaiah's time. 2. The parts of the last chapters of Isaiah which represent the prophet as viewing the desolation of Jerusalem and of the country and the misery of the people, and which are quoted by the critics to prove that this part of the prophecy was written during the exile, have parallel passages in the first part. If we take these passages in the second part which the critics quote in this connection, as for example, xlii. 22, 24; xliii. 28; xliv. 26 ; li. 3; lxiv. 10, 11, and compare with them passages from the first part, as for example, i. 7-9, 21, 27; iii. 8, 12, 13; x. 20, 21; xi. 10-12; xxii. 4, we shall see that there are just as strong passages in the first part, as in the second, to prove that the writer was in the midst of the desolations of the country and capital when he wrote. The fact that the captivity of the ten tribes took place in the midst of Isaiah's ministry and that Judah was ravaged by the king of Assyria in Isaiah's time,-(See 2-Kings xvii. xviii. Chapters,-) and that even the treasures of the temple were taken,-(See 2-Ki. xviii. 15, 16,-) accounts for the prophet's language in part, and it explains his speaking of the people as still in Zion. It is, however, to be said that prophecy was often given in the form of vision and the prophet was absorbed in the midst of the vision, so that time and space were annihilated and he stood in the midst of the future scenes which he saw and described. See the liii. lx. lxiii. chapters of Is. ; see also in the xv. chap. the desolations of Moab; in the xvii. that of Damascus ; in the xxi. that of Babylon; in the xxiii. that of Tyre, spoken while Tyre was yet in her glory. The fact that Babylon is mentioned in the last part is no objection,-See xliii. 14; xlvii. 1; xlviii. 14, 20;-, for in the xxxix. chap. we have it foretold that Babylon shall come and carry away everything. 3. When we compare Isaiah with the books of the other prophets, we find abundant evidence that it was all written in the time of Isaiah. Jeremiah lived at the date of the |