usque ad civitates munitas ; et a civitatibus munitis usque ad flumen. This is a possible version, but not, I think, the preferable one. In Micah I have been enabled to compare occasionally with other aids the commentary of Hitzig. My obligations in other respects remain as before; although contemporaneous events have suggested fuller dissertation. 207 INTRODUCTION TO ISAIAH. THE Prophets hitherto treated have presented comparatively simple questions of interpretation. We enter in Isaiah a larger field, in which the arrangement is often doubtful; the authorship of parts disputed; a succession of questions arises, not unlikely to open our minds to the idea that Hebrew literature has descended to us but in fragments. The reader will find it convenient to have the elements of so complex a topic distributed under the passages in which they arise. Some apprehension of the nature of the case may be conveyed here. The reign of Uzziah, extending prosperously over two years beyond the half century, B.C. 808 to 756, was yet clouded in its close by the king's leprosy, during which his son Jotham represented him. Succeeding his father in the year conventionally called 756, Jotham reigned prudently sixteen years. The less happy reign of Ahaz follows, during the period from 741, to what must be here called 726, (by others 728, and as late as 714). The Scripture account is, that Ahaz began to reign when 20 years old, reigned 16 years, and died at 36, leaving a son aged 25. It would follow that he had become a father when only eleven years old, unless we suppose, as a less difficulty, that twenty-five is a slip of the text (2 Kings xviii. 2,) for fifteen, which is otherwise a probable age for Hezekiah at his father's death.1 Hezekiah's reign, the most pious, in some respects the 1 Hence a well-known chronological argument of Bishop Pearson's in reference to Isaiah ix. can hardly be relied upon. most glorious, since the disruption of the two realms, lasted twenty-nine years, 726-696. His religious policy was reversed by his successor Manasseh, who not only favoured the freer worship of Jehovah in the high places as well as in Jerusalem, but is classed with the Samaritan Ahab, as a worshipper of Baal, and set up an image of Astarte, or Asherah, (A. V. 'Grove,') in the courts of the Temple. If we might trust the fabulous form in which the Gemara records the tradition of Isaiah's death, it would seem that Manasseh retained sufficient respect for the Mosaic law, to sentence the Prophet for contradicting it, as e.g. by his bold figure of seeing God' (vi. 5), he might be held to contradict Exodus xxxiii. 20, 'No man sees me, and lives.' But the passages quoted by Gesenius, (Einl. § 1. pp. 10-12.) shew the earliest form of the tradition to have been Manasseh put Isaiah to death;' to which the sawing asunder in a hollow cedar-tree was added later. What here concerns us, is that the limits of the Prophet's activity lie between the last year of Uzziah and a date, probably early, in Manasseh's reign. This period included the invasions of Tiglath-Pileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon, and Sennacherib, and saw a shadow pass over the Assyrian empire in the still brilliant reign of Esar-haddon. Having observed the Assyrian discoveries change their aspect more than once during the progress of this work, I wish to guard against its suffering from any future change by a respectful neutrality. The reader will notice, if he adopts Mr. Rawlinson's chronology, Anc. Mon. cap. ix. vol. ii. p. 291, that the events of Hezekiah's reign must be brought some fourteen, or more, years lower, to correspond with Sennacherib's invasion. This in some systems is adopted. Our leading dates therefore may be Some interest attaches to the history of Sargana and the relations borne to him possibly by generals, whom we usually consider kings; but any preference which the reader may accord to either of the above or similar systems appears remarkably destitute of bearing upon the deeper import, moral or religious, of the Bible. That the introducers of the new views invite us to alter the sacred text, in 2 Kings xviii. 13, from fourteenth into twenty-seventh, in order to suit their Assyrian calculations, needs not be fatal, but does not prepossess me in their favour. Mr. Rawlinson admits, vol. ii. pp. 434-445, the Assyrian and Hebrew numbers to be irreconcilable. In the sixth chapter we have a magnificent vision, giving shape to the Prophet's recollection of his first call to the service of God. Since he had been called in the last year of a prosperous reign, it is evident that the desolation described in our first chapter could not have preceded the call recorded in our sixth, even if the work of preaching could have preceded a call to it. Hence it has been thought right by some to commence their arrangement of the works of Isaiah, with our sixth chapter, and to place the VOL. I. P five earlier chapters, in an order new, but suggested to them by internal correspondence with certain epochs. Again, the second chapter of our book is on the face of it nearly identical with one in Micah; therefore must be wrongly arranged in Isaiah, or borrowed either by him or by Micah, unless both borrowed it from some one before them. As we proceed, we find ch. xiv. (A. V. xv. and xvi.) confessedly quoted by the writer, that is, I suppose, Isaiah, from a far older denunciation by some prophet unknown. A circumstance, somewhat different, may strike us in the xiiith chapter. A fragment of promise that the Assyrian shall be broken, there appears, like a splinter of rock, detached from the mass of predication affecting Assyria which we had found in chapters x. xi., and separated from it, as by an intervening boulder, by the splendid song of triumph over Babylon. I shall ask, lower down, how far it could have been natural for Isaiah just then to mention Babylon, but here speak of arrangement. We may next notice about seven chapters, xiii. to xx. in this volume, (A. V. xiv.-xxiii.) in which fragmentary utterances on different nations are recorded, with nothing that should tempt us to deny Isaiah their authorship for the most part, yet little to warrant us in supposing their arrangement chronological; rather with circumstances implying otherwise. After this collection comes a group of chapters xxi.—xxiii. (A. V. xxiv.-xxvii.) which, though perfectly canonical, we shall find reasons unconnected with theories of prediction for thinking written at a time subsequent to Isaiah. Once more, a group of chapters, xxiv.—xxvii. (A. V. xxviii.—xxxiii.) will occur, recalling so decisively the Prophet of the Vision and the grand denunciations of the earliest chapters of the book, that the writer's identity is beyond doubt. We then relapse for two chapters, xxix. xxx. into a vindictive strain upon Edom, which is open to |