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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

ISAIAH:

NEW TRANSLATION ;

WITH

A PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION,

AND

NOTES,
CRITICAL, PHILOLOGICAL, AND EXPLANATORY,

By ROBERT LOWTH, D,D, F,R,SS. Lond, & Goet,
LOED BISHOP OP LONDON.

THE TENTH EDITION,
CAREFULLY C OEifiCXfiP A N D REVISED.

PRINTED FOR T. T. & J. TEGG, 73. CHEAPSIDE;
R, GRIFFIN & CO, GLASGOW ; AND W, F, WAKEMAN,
DUBLIN,

MDCCCXXXIIL

YALt

Mil)-, 44

Printed by Walker & Greig,
Edinburgli.

TO

THE KING,

Sir,
An attempt to set in a just light the writings of
the most sublime and elegant of the Prophets of the Old
Testament might merit the honour of your Majesty's gra
cious acceptance, were the execution in any degree answer
able to the design. If it has at all succeeded, it is in a great
measure to be ascribed to a particular attention to that most
important, but too long neglected, part of sacred criticism,
which, to the honour of this nation, and to the universal
benefit of the Christian Church, hath been set forward, and
is now greatly advanced, under your Majesty's distinguished
patronage. Your Majesty's taste and judgment have in
duced you to encourage every part of science tending to the
benefit of your people and the glory of your age ; and your
Majesty's piety hath prompted you to promote, in the first
place, every thing that may contribute to the advancement of
true religion, and to favour every well meant design which
has that great object in view.

DEDICATION,

This consideration encourages me to beg leave humbly
to approach your Majesty with this small offering, accom
panied with the truest sentiments of duty, affection, and
gratitude ; and with the most fervent prayers to Almighty
God for Your Majesty's happiness, private and public,
temporal and eternal.
Your Majesty's Most dutiful Subject
And most devoted Servant,
R, LONDON,

THE

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.

The design of the following translation of Isaiah, is not
only to give an exact and faithful representation of the words
and of the sense of the Prophet, by adhering closely to the
letter of the text, and treading as nearly as may be in his
footsteps ; but, moreover, to imitate the air and manner of
the author, to express the form and fashion of the composi
tion, and to give the English reader some notion of the pe
culiar turn and cast of the original. The latter part of this
design coincides perfectly well with the former : it is indeed
impossible to give a just idea of the Prophet's manner of
writing, otherwise than by a close literal version. And yet,
though so many literal versions of this Prophet have been
given, as well of old as in later times, a just representation
of his manner, and of the form of his composition, has never
been attempted, or even thought of, by any translator, in
any language, whether ancient or modern. Whatever of
that kind has appeared in former translations, (and much
indeed must appear in every literal translation), has been
rather the effect of chance than of design, of necessity than
of study : for what room could there be for study or design
in this case, or at least for success in it, when the translators
themselves had but a very imperfect notion, an inadequate
or even false idea, of the real character of the author as a
writer ; of the general nature, and of the pecuhar form, of
the composition?
It has, I think, been universally understood, that the
Prophecies of Isaiah are written in prose. The style, the
thoughts, the images, the expressions, have been allowed to
be poetical, and that in the highest degree ; but that they

ii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION,
are written in verse, in measure, or rhythm, or whatever it
is that distinguishes, as poetry, the coraposition of those
books of the Old Testament which are allowed to be poeti
cal, such as Job, the Psalms, and the Proverbs, from the
historical books, as mere prose ; this has never been sup
posed, at least has not been at any time the prevailing
opinion. The opinions of the learned concerning Hebrew
verse have been various; their ideas of the nature of it
vague, obscure, and imperfect : yet stiU there has been a
general persuasion, that some books of the Old Testament
are written in verse ; but that the writings of the prophets
are not of that number.
The learned Vitringa says,* that Isaiah's composition has
a sort of numbers, or measure ; " esse orationem suis ad-
strictam numeris ;" he means, that it has a kind of oratorial
number, or measure, as he afterwards explains it ; and he
quotes Scaliger as being of the same opinion, and as adding,
that " however upon this account it could not rightly- be
called poetry,"f About the beginning of this century,
Herman Von der Hardt,:|; the Hardouin of Germany,
attempted to reduce Joel's Elegies, as he called them, to
iambic verse; and, consistently with his hypothesis, he
affirmed, that the prophets wrote in verse. This is the only
exception I meet with to the universality of the contrary
opinion. It was looked upon as one of his paradoxes, and
little attention was paid to it. But what was his success in
making out Joel's iarabics, and in helping his readers to-
form in consequence a more just idea of the character of the
prophetic style, I cannot say, having never seen his treatise
on that subject.
The Jews of early times were of the same opinion, that
the books of the prophets qre written in prose, as far as we
have any evidence of their judgment on this subject, Je
rome § certainly speaks the sense of his Jewish preceptors
as to this matter. Having written his translation of Isaiah
from the Hebrew Verity in stichi, or lines divided accord
ing to the cola and commata, after the manner of verse,
which was || often done in the prophetic writings for the
* Prolegom. in lesaiam, p. 8.
f Scaliger, Aniinadvers. in Chron. Eusebii, p. 6.
\ See Wolfii Biblioth. Hebr. tom. ii. p. 169.
§ Pr»f. in Transl. Esaiao ex Heb. Veritafe.
II See Grabe, Proleg. in LXX, Intt. tom. i. cap. i. § 6.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. iii
sake of perspicuity, he cautions his reader " not to mistake
it for metre, as if it were any thing like the Psalms, or the
writings of Solomon ; for it was nothing more than what
was usual in the copies of the prose works of Demosthenes
and Cicero," The later Jews have been uniformly of the
same opinion ; and the rest of the learned world seem to
have taken it up on their authority, and have generally
maintained it.
But if there should appear a manifest conformity between
the prophetical style and that of the books supposed to be
metrical — a conformity in every known part of the poetical
character, which equally discriminates the prophetical and
the metrical books from those acknowledged to be prose — it
will be of use to trace out and to mark this conformity vidth
all possible accuracy; -to observe how far the peculiar cha
racteristics of each style coincide ; and to see whether the
agreement between them be such as to induce us to con
clude, that the poetical and the prophetical character of
style and composition, though generally supposed to be dif
ferent, yet are really one and the same.
This I purpose to do in the following dissertation; and
I the more readily embrace the present opportunity of re
suming this subject, as what I have formerly written* upon
it seeras to have met with the approbation of the learned.
And here I shall endeavour to treat it more at large ; to
pursue it further, and to a greater degree of minuteness ;
and to present it to the English reader in the easiest and
most intelligible form that I am able to give it. The ex
amples with which I shall illustrate it, shall be more nume
rous, and all (a very few excepted) different from those al
ready given ; that they may serve by way of supplement to
that part of the fotmer work, as well as of themselves to
place the subject in the fullest and clearest light.
Now, in order to make this comparison between the pro
phetical and the poetical books, it will be necessa^ry, in the
first place, to state the true character of the poetical or
metrical style, to trace out carefully whatever plain signs or
indications yet remain of metre, or rhythm, or whatever else
it was that constituted Hebrew verse ; to separate the true,
or at least the probable, from the manifestly false ; and to
* De Sacra Poesi Hebrseorum Prselect. xviii. xix.

iv PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
give as clear and satisfactory an explanation of the matter
as can now reasonably be expected, in the present imperfect
state of the Hebrew language, and on a subject which for
near two thousand years has been involved in great obscurity,
and only rendered .s^till more obscure by the discordant
opinions of the learned, and the vairious hypotheses which
they have formed concerning it.
The first and most manifest indication of verse in the
Hebrew poetical books, presents itself in the acrostic or
alphabetical poems; of which there happily remain many
examples, and those of various kinds ; so that we could not
have hoped, or even wished, for more light of this sort to
lead us on in the very entrance of our inquiry- The na
ture, or rather the form, of these poems is this : The poem
consists of twenty-two lines, or of twenty-two systems of
lines, or periods, or stanzas, according to the number
of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; and every line,
or every stanza, begins with each letter in its order, as
it stands in the alphabet; that is, the first line, or first
stanza, begins with N, the second with a, and so on. This
was certainly intended for the assistance of the memory,
and was chiefly employed in subjects of common use, as
maxims of morality, and forms of devotion; which being
expressed in detached sentences, or aphorisms, (the form
in which the sages of the most ancient times delivered
their instructions), the inconvenience arising from the sub
ject, the want of connexion in the parts, and of a regular
train of thought carried through the whole, was remedied
by this artificial contrivance in the form. There are still
extant, in the books of the Old Testament, twelve* of
these poeras ; (for I reckon the four first chapters of the
Lamentations of Jeremiah as so raany distinct poems) ;
three of them perfectly f alphabetical, in which every line
is marked by its initial letter ; the other nine less perfectly
alphabetical, in which every stanza only is so distinguished.
Of the three former it is to be remarked, that not only
every single line is distinguished by its initial letter, but
that the whole poem is laid out into stanzas ; two :j; of these
* Psal. XXV. xxxiv. xxxvii. cxi. cxii. cxix. cxlv. Prov. xxxi. 10  31,
Lam. i. ii. iii. iv.
f Psal. cxi. cxii. Lara. iii. \ Psal. cxi. cxii.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. v
poems each into ten stanzas, all of two lines, except the two
last stanzas in each, which are of three lines : in these, the
sense and the construction manifestly point out the division
into stanzas, and mark the limit of every stanza. The
third* of these perfectly alphabetical poeras consists of
twenty-two stanzas of three lines ; but in this the initial let
ter of every stanza is also the initial letter of every line of
that stanza ; so that both the lines and the stanzas are in
fallibly limited : And, in all the three poems, the pauses of
the sentences coincide with the pauses of the lines and
stanzas. It is also further to be observed of these three poeras, that
the lines so determined by the initial letters in the same
poem, are remarkably equal to one another in length, in the
nuraber of words nearly, and probably in the number of
syllables ; and that the lines of the same stanza have a re
markable congruity one with another, in the matter and the
form, in the sense and the construction.
Of the other nine poems less perfectly alphabetical, in
which the stanzas only are marked with initial letters,
sixf consist of stanzas of two lines, twof of stanzas of three
lines, and one§ of stanzas of four lines; not taking into the
account at present some irregularities, which in all proba
bility are to be iraputed to the raistakes of transcribers.
And these stanzas likewise naturally divide theraselves into
their distinct lines, the sense and the construction plainly
pointing out their limits ; and the lines have the same con
gruity one with another in matter and form, as was above
observed in regard to the poems more perfectly alpha
betical. Another thing to be observed of the three poems perfectly
alphabetical is, that in two|| of them the lines are shorter
than those of the third** by about one-third part, or almost
half; and of the other nine poems, the stanzas only of which
are alphabetical, that threeff consist of the longer lines,
and the six others of the shorter.
Now, from these examples, which are not only curious,
but of real use, and of great importance in the present
* Lam. iii.
f Psal. XXV. xxxiv. cxix. cxlv. Prov. xxxi. Lam. iv.
{ Lam. i. ii. § Psal. xxxvii.
II Psal. cxi. cxii. ** Lam. iii.
¦(¦f Lam. i. ii. iv.

vi PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
inquiry, we may draw sorae conclusions, which plainly follow
from the premises, and must be admitted m regard to the
alphabetical poems themselves; which also may by analogy
be applied with great probability to other poems, where the
lines and stanzas are not so determined by initial letters,
yet which appear in other respects to be of the same kind.
In the first place, we may safely conclude, that the poems
perfectly alphabetical consist of verses properly so called;
of verses regulated by some observation of harmony or ca
dence ; of measure, numbers, or rhythm. For it is not at
all probable in the nature of the thing, or from examples of
the like kind in other languages, that a portion of mere
prose, in which numbers and harraony are totally disregard
ed, should be laid out according to a scale of division, which
carries with it such evident marks of study and labour, of
art in the contrivance, and exactness in the execution. And
I presume it will be easily granted in regard to the other
poems which are divided into stanzas by the initial letterSj
which stanzas are subdivided by the pauses of the sentence
into lines easily distinguished one from another, commonly
the same number of lines to a stanza in the same poem,
that these are of the same kind of composition with the
former, and that they equally consist of verses : And, in
general, in regard to the rest of the poems of the Hebrews,
bearing evidently the same marks and characteristics of
composition with the alphabetical poems in other respects,
and falling into regular lines, often into regular stanzas,
according to the pauses- of the sentences ; which stanzas and
lines have a certain parity or proportion to one another;
that these likewise consist of verse — of verse distinguished
from prose, not only by the style, the figures, the diction,
by a loftiness of thought and richness of imagery, but by
being divided into lines, and sometimes into systems of
lines ; which lines, having an apparent equality, similitude,
or proportion one to another, were in some sort measured
by the ear, and regulated according to some general laws
of metre, rhythm, harmony, or cadence.
Further, we may conclude, frora the example of the per
fectly alphabetical poems, that whatever it might be that
constituted Hebrew verse, it certainly did not consist in
rhyme, or similar and correspondent sounds at the ends of
the verses ; for, as the ends of^the verses in those poems are
infallibly marked, and it plainly, appears that the final sylla-

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION, vu
bles of the correspondent verses, whether in distichs or
triplets, are not similar in sound to one another, it is mani
fest that rhymes, or similar endings, are not an essential
part of Hebrew verses. The grammatical forras of the
Hebrew language in the verbs, and pronouns, and the
plurals of nouns, are so simple and uniform, ai\d bear so
great a share in the termination of words, that sirailar end
ings must sometimes happen, and cannot well be avoided ;
but, so far from constituting an essential or principal part
of the art of Hebrew versification, they seem to have been
no object of attention and study, nor to have been industri
ously sought after as a favourite accessary ornament.
That the verses had something regular in their form and
composition, seems probable from their apparent parity and
uniformity, and the relation which they manifestly bear to
the distribution of the sentence into its members. But as
to the harmony and cadence, the metre or rhythm, of what
kind they were, and by what laws regulated, these examples
give us no light, nor afford us sufficient principles on which
to build any theory, or to form any hypothesis. For har
mony arises from the proportion, relation, and correspond
ence of different combined sounds; and verse, from the
arrangement of words, and the disposition of syllables, ac
cording to number, quantity, and accent; — therefore the
harraony and true modulation of verse depends upon a per
fect pronunciation of the language, and a knowledge of the
principles and rules of versification ; and metre supposes an
exact knowledge of the number and quantity of syllables,
and, in some languages, of the accent. But the true pro
nunciation of Hebrew is lost — lost to a degree far beyond
what can ever be the case of any European language pre
served only in writing ; for the Hebrew language, like most
of the other Oriental languages,, expressing only the con
sonants, and being destitute of its vowels, has lain now for
two thousand years in a manner mute and incapable of
utterance : the number of syllables is in a great many words
uncertain, the quantity and accent wholly unknown. We
are ignorant of all these particulars, and incapable of ac
quiring any certain knowledge concerning them ; how then
is it possible for us to attain tt> the knowledge of Hebrew
verse ? That we know nothing of the quantity of the syllables
in Hebrew, and of the number of them in many words, and
of the accent, will hardly now be denied by any man ; but

viii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
if any should stiU maintain the authority of the Masoretical
punctuation, (though discordant in many instances from the
imperfect remains of a pronunciation of much earlier date,
and of better authority, that of the Seventy, of Origen, and
other writers), yet it must be aUowed, that no one, accord
ing to that system, hath been able to reduce the Hebrew
poeras to any sort of harmony,* And indeed it is not to
be wondered, that rules of pronunciation, formed, as it is
now generally admitted, above a thousand years after the
language ceased to be spoken, should fail of giving us the
true sound of Hebrew verse. But if it was impossible for
the Masoretes, assisted in some measure by a traditionary
pronunciation delivered down from their ancestors, to attain
to a true expression of the sounds of the language, how is it
possible for us at this time, so much further removed from
the only source of knowledge in this case, the audible voice,
to improve or to amend their system, or to supply a more
genuine system in its place, which -may answer our purpose
better, and lay open to us the laws of Hebrew versification ?
The pursuit is vain; the object of it lies beyond our reach;
it is not within the compass of human rea.son or invention.
The question concerning Hebrew metre is now pretty much
upon the same footing with that concerning the Greek ac
cents. That there were certain laws of ancient Hebrew
metre is very probable ; and that the living Greek language
was modulated by certain rules of accent is beyond dispute :
but a man born deaf may as reasonably pretend to acquire
an idea of sound, as the critic of these days to attain to the
true modulation of Greek by accent, and of Hebrew by
metre,f Thus much then, I think, we may be allowed to infer
from the alphabetical poems; namely, that the Hebrew
poems are written in verse, properly so called; that the^-
harmony of the verses does not arise from rhyme, that is, '
from sirailar corresponding sounds terminating the verses, but
from some sort of rhythm, probably from some sort of metre,
the laws of which are now altogether unknown, and wholly
undiscoverable;— yet that there are evident marks of a cer
tain correspondence of the verses with one another, and of
a certain relation between the composition of the verses and
¦• See Hare, Prolegomena in Psalmos, p. xl. &c.
t See A Larger Confutation of Bishop Hare's Hebrew Metre • T nnHnn
1766; where I have fully treated of this subject. ' ^°"<'°"'

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. ix
the composition of the sentences, — the formation of the for
mer depending in some degree upon the distribution of the
latter, — so that generally periods coincide with stanzas, mem
bers with verses, and pauses of the one with pauses of the
other ; which peculiar form of composition is so observable,
as plainly to discriminate in general the parts of the Hebrew
Scriptures which are written in verse, from those which are
written in prose. This will require a larger and more
minute explication, not only as a matter necessary to our
present purpose, that is, to ascertain the character of the
prophetical style in general, and of that of the Prophet
Isaiah in particular, but as a principle of considerable use,
and of no small importance, in the interpretation of the
poetical parts of the Old Testament.
The correspondence of one verse or line with another, I
call parallelism. When a proposition is delivered, and a
second is subjoined to it, or drawn under it, equivalent, or
contrasted with it in sense, or similar to it in the form of
grammatical construction, these I call parallel lines; and
the words or phrases, answering one to another in the cor
responding lines, parallel terras.
Parallel lines may be reduced to three sorts, — parallels
synonymous, parallels antithetic, and parallels synthetic.
Of each of these I shall give a variety of examples, in order
to shew the various forms under which they appear ; first,
from the books universally acknowledged to be poetical;
then, correspondent examples from the Prophet Isaiah, and
soraetimes also from the other prophets, to shew that the
form and character of the coraposition is in all the same.
As some of the examples which follow are of many lines,
the reader may perhaps note a single line or two intermixed,
which do not properly belong to that class under which they
are ranged. These are retained, to preserve the connexion
and harmony of the whole passage ; and it is to be observed,
that the several sorts of parallels are perpetually mixed with
one another, and this mixture gives a variety and beauty to
the composition.
First, of parallel lines synonyraous ; that is, which corre
spond one to another, by expressing the same sense in dif
ferent but equivalent terms ; when a proposition is delivered,
and is immediately repeated, in the whole or in part, the

x PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
expression being varied, but the sense entirely or nearly the
same. As in the following examples : —
" O-Jehovah, in-thy-strength the-king shall-rejoice ;
And-in-thy-salvation how greatly shall-he-exult !
The-desire of-his-heart thou-hast-granted unto-him ;
And-the-request of-his-h"ps thou-hast-not denied." Psal. xxi. 1, 2.
" Because I-called, and-ye-refused ;
I-stretched-out my-hand, and-no-one regarded :
But-ye-have-defeated all my-counsel;
And-woiild-not incline to-my-reproof :
I also will-laugh at-your- calamity ;
I-will-mock, when-what-you-feared cometh ;
When-what-you-feared cometh like-a-devastation ;
And-your-calamity advanceth like-a-tempest ;
When-distress and-anguish come upon-you :
Then shall-they-call-upon-me, but-I-will-not answer ;
They-shall-seek-me-early, but-they-shall-not find-me ;
Because they-hated knowledge ;
And-did-not choose the-fear of-Jehovah ;
Did-not incline to-my-counsel ;
Contemptuously-rejected all my-reproof :
Therefore-shall-they-eat of-the-fruit of-their-ways ;
And-shall-be-satiated with-their-own-devices.
For the-defection of-the-simple shall-slay-them ;
And-the-security of-fools shall-destroy them." Prov. i. 24—32.
" Seek-ye Jehovah, while-he-may-be-found ;
Call-ye-upon-him, while-he-is near ;
Let-the-wicked forsake his-way ;
And-the-unrighteous man his-thoughts :
And-let-him-return to Jehovah, and-he-will-compassionate
him ;
And-unto our-God, for he-aboundeth in forgiveness." Isa. Iv. 6, 7.
" Fear not, for thou-shalt-not be-ashamed ;
And-blush not, for thou-shalt-not be-brought-to-reproach :
For thou-shalt-forget the-shame of-thy-youth ;
And-the-reproach of-thy-widowhood thou-shalt-remember no
more." Isa, liv. 4.
" Hearken unto-me, ye-that-know righteousness ;
The-people in-whose-heart is-my-Iaw :
Fear not the-reproach of-wretched-man ;
Neither be-ye-borne-down by-their-revilings ;

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION, xi
For the-moth shall-consume-them like-a-garment ;
And-the-worm shall-eat-them like wool :
But-my-righteousness shall-endure for-ever;
And-my-salvation to-the-age of-ages," Isa, Ii, 7, 8,
" Like-mighty-men shall-they-rush-on ;
Like-warriors shall-they-mount the-wall :
And-every-one in-his-way shall-they-march ;
And-they-shall-not turn-aside from-their paths." Joel, ii. 7.
" Blessed-is the-man, that-feareth Jehovah ;
That-greatly delighteth in-his-commandments." Psal. cxii. 1,
" Hearken unto-me, O-house of-Jacob ;
And-all the-remnant of-the-house of-Israel," Isa, xlvi, 3,
" Honour Jehovah with-thy-riches ;
And-with-the-first-fruits of-all thine-increase," Prov, iii, 9,
" Incline your-ear, and-come unto-me ;
Hearken, and-your-soul shall-live," Isa, Iv, 3,
In the foregoing* examples may be observed the diffe
rent degrees of synonymous parallelism. The parallel lines
sometimes consist of three or more synonymous terms;
sometimes of two, which is generally the case when the
verb, or the nominative case of the first sentence is to be
carried on to the second, or understood there ; sometimes
of one only, as in the four last examples. There are also
among the foregoing a few instances, in which the lines con
sist each of double members, or two propositions, I shall
add one or two more of these, very perfect in their kind : —
" Bow thy heavens, O Jehovah, and descend ;
Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke :
Dart forth lightning, and scatter them ;
Shoot out thine arrows, and destroy them." Psal, cxliv, 5, 6,
" And they shall build houses, and shall inhabit them ;
And they shall plant vineyards, and shall eat the fruit thereof:
They shall not build, and another inhabit ;
They shall not plant, and another eat :
For as the days of a tree, shall be the days of my people ;
And they shall wear out the works of their own hands."
Isa, Ixv, 21, 22,
* The terms in English, consisting of several words, are hitherto distinguish
ed with marks of connexion,— to shew, that they answer to single words in
Hebrew.

xii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
Parallels are also sometimes formed by a repetition of
part of the first sentence : —
" My voice is unto God, and I cry aloud ;
My voice is unto God, and he will hearken unto me, '
" I will remember the works of Jehovah ; ^^
Yea, I will remember thy wonders of old,
" The waters saw thee, O God !
The waters saw thee ; they were seized with anguish,
Psal, Ixxvu, 1, 11, 16,
" For he hath humbled those that dwell on high ;
The lofty city, he hath brought her down :
He hath brought her down to the ground.
He hath levelled her with the dust.
The foot shall trample upon her ;
The feet of the poor, the steps of the needy," Isa, xxvi, 5, 6,
" What shall I do unto thee, O Ephraim I
What shall I do unto thee, O Judah I
For your goodness is as the morning cloud.
And as the early dew it passeth away," Hosea, vi, 4,
Sometimes in the latter line a part is to be supplied from
the former to complete the sentence : —
" And those that persecute me thou wilt make to turn their
backs to me;
Those that hate me,* and I will cut them off," 2 Sam, xxii, 41,
" The mighty dead tremble from beneath ;
The waters, and they that dwell therein," Job, xxvi, 5,
" And I looked, and there was no raan ;
Even among the idols,+ and there was no one that gave ad-
. »>
vice;
" And I inquired of them, and [there was no one] that returned
an answer," Isa, xli, 28,
Further, there are parallel triplets — when three lines cor
respond together, and form a kind of stanza, of which, how
ever, only two commonly are synonymous : —
* In the parallel place, Psal. xviii. the poetical form of the sentence is much
hurt, by the removing of the conjunction from the second to the first word in
this line ; but a MS. in that place reads as here.
f See the note on the place.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIOSJ. xiii
" The wicked shall see it, and it shall grieve him ;
He shall gnash his teeth, and pine away ;
The desire of the wicked shall perish," Psal. cxii. 10.
" That day, let it become darkness ;
Let not God from above inquire after it ;
Nor let the flowing light radiate upon it.
That night, let utter darkness seize it ;
Let it not be united with the days of the year ;
Let it not come into the number of the months.
Let the stars of its twilight be darkened :
Let it look for light, and may there be none ;
And let it not behold the eyelids of the morning," Job, iii, 4, 6, 9,
" And he shall snatch on the right, and yet be hungry ;
And he shall devour on the left, and not be satisfied ;
Every man shall devour the flesh of his neighbour,"* Isa, ix, 20,
" Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe ;
Come away, get you down, for the wine-press is full ;
The vats overflow ; for great is their wickedness," Joel, iii, 13.
There are likewise parallels consisting of four lines ; two
distichs being so connected together, by the sense and the
construction, as to make one stanza. Such is the form of
tlie xxxviith Psalm, which is evidently laid out by the ini
tial letters in stanzas of four lines ; though in regard to that
disposition some irregularities are found in the present
copies. From this Psalm, which gives a sufficient warrant
for considering the union of two distichs as making a S'tanza
of four lines, I shall take the first example :—
" Be not moved with indignation against the evil-doers ;
Nor with zeal against the workers of iniquity :
For like the grass they shall soon be cut off;
And like the green herb they shall wither," Psal, xxxvii, 1, 2,
" The ox knoweth his possessor ;
And the ass the crib of his lord ;
But Israel doth not know Me;*
Neither doth my people consider," Isa, i, 3.
" And I said, I have laboured in vain ;
For nought and for vanity I have spent my strength :
* See the note on the place.

xiv PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
Nevertheless my cause is with Jehovah ;
And the reward of my work with my God," Isa, xlix, 4.
" Jehovah shall roar from Sion ;
And shall utter his voice from Jerusalem :
And the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn ;
And the head of Carmel shall wither," Amos, i. 2.
In like manner, some periods may be considered as mak
ing stanzas of five lines, in which the odd line or member
either comes in between two distichs, or after two distichs
makes a full close : —
" If thou wouldst seek early unto God ;
And make thy supplication to the Almighty ;
If thou wert pure and upright :
Verily now would he rise up in thy defence ;
And make peaceable the dwelling of thy righteousness. Job, viii. 5, 6.
" They bear him on the shoulder ; they carry him about ;
They set him down in his place, and he standeth ;
From his place he shall not remove ;
To him, that crieth unto him, he will not answer ;
Neither will he deliver him from his distress." Isa. xlvi, 7,
" Who is wise, and will understand these things ?
Prudent, and will know them ?
For right are the ways of Jehovah ;
And the just shall walk in them ;
But the disobedient shall fall therein," Hosea, xiv, 9,
" And Jehovah shall roar out of Sion ;
And from Jerusalem shall utter his voice ;
And the heavens and the earth shall tremble :
But Jehovah will be the refuge of his people ;
And a strong defence to the sons of Israel," Joel, iii, 16,
" Who establisheth the word of his servant ;
And accomplisheth the counsel of his messengers :
Who sayeth to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited ;
And to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built ;
And her desolate places I will restore," Isa, xliv, 26,
In stanzas of four lines, sometimes the parallel lines an
swer to one another alternately ; the first to the third, and
the second to the fourth : — ¦

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xv
" As the heavens are high above the earth ;
So high* is his goodness over them that fear him :
As remote as the east is from the west ;
So far hath he removed from us our transgressions." PsaLciii.'ll, 12,
" And ye said. Nay, but on horses will we flee ;
Therefore shall ye be put to flight :
And on swift coursers will we ride ;
Therefore shall they be swift, that pursue you," Isa, xxx, 16.
And a stanza of five lines adraits of the same elegance :¦ —
" Who is there among you that feareth Jehovah ?
Let him hearken unto the voice of his servant :
That walketh in darkness, and hath no light ?
Let him trust in the name of Jehovah ;
And rest himself on the support of his God." Isa, 1, 10.
'/ The second sort of parallels are the antithetic — when two
lines correspond with one another by an opposition of terms
and sentiments ; when the second is contrasted with the
first, sometimes in expressions, sometimes in sense only.
Accordingly the degrees of antithesis are various ; from an
exact contraposition of word to word through the whole
sentence, down to a general disparity, with soraething of a
contrariety, in the two propositions.
Thus, in the following examples : — *
" A wise son rejoiceth his father ;
But a foolish son is the grief of his mother." Prov. x. 1.
Where every word hath its opposite ; for the terms father
and mother are, as the logicians say, relatively opposite.
" The memory of the just is a blessing ;
But the name of the wicked shall rot,'' Prov, x, 7,
Here there are only two antithetic terms ; for memory and
name are synonyraous,
" There is that scattereth, and still increaseth ;
And that is unreasonably sparing, yet groweth poor," Prov, xi, 24,
* rra J ; compare the next verse ; and see Isaiah, Iv. 9. and the note there.

xvi PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
Here there is a kind of double antithesis ; one between the
two fines themselves; and likewise a subordinate opposition
between the two parts of each,
" Many seek the face of the prince ;
But the determination concerning a man is from Jehovah,
Prov, xxix, 26,
Where the opposition is chiefly between the single terras,
the Prince and Jehovah : but there is an opposition like
wise in the general sentiment; which expresses, or inti
mates, the vanity of depending on the former, without
seeking the favour of the latter. In the following, there is
much the same opposition of sentiment, vdthout any con
traposition of terms at all : —
" The lot is cast into the lap j
B-ut the whole determination of it is from Jehovah," Prov, xvi, 33,
That is, the event seems to be the work of chance, but is
really the direction of Providence,
The foregoing examples are all taken from the Proverbs
of Solomon, where they abound : for this form is peculiarly
adapted to that kind of writing — to adages, aphorisms, and
detached sentences. Indeed, the elegance, acuteness, and
force of a great number of Solomon's wise sayings, arise in
a great measure frora the antithetic form, the opposition of
diction and sentiment. We are not therefore to expect
frequent instances of it in the other poems of the Old Tes
tament; especially those that are elevated in the style, and
more connected in the parts. However, I shall add a few
examples of the like kind frora the higher poetry,
" These in chariots, and those in horses ;
But we in the name of Jehovah our God will be strong,*
They are bowed down, and fallen ;
But we are risen, and maintain ourselves firm," Psal, xx, 7, 8,
" For his wrath is but for a moment, his favour for life ;
Sorrow may lodge for the evening, but in the morning glad
ness," Psal, XXX, 5,
" Yet a little while, and the wicked shall be no more ;
Thou shalt look at his place, and he shall not be found :
* ^liai, so LXX, Syr. ^thiop.

\

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xvii >
But the meek shall inherit the land ;
And delight themselves in abundant prosperity," Psal, xxxvii, 10, 11.
In the last example, the opposition lies between the two
parts of a stanza of four lines, the latter distich being-
opposed to the former. So likewise the following : —
" For the mountains shall be removed ;
And the hills shall be overthrown :
But my kindness from thee shall not be removed ;
And the covenant of my peace shall not be overthrown," Isa, liv, 10,
" The bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stone ;
The sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them with
cedars," Isa, ix, 10,
Here the lines themselves are synthetically parallel; and
the, opposition lies between the two members of each.
The third sort of parallels I call synthetic or construc
tive — where the parallelism consists only in the similar form
of construction ; in which word does not answer to word,
and sentence to sentence, as equivalent or opposite; but
there is a correspondence and equality between different
propositions, in respect of the shape and turn of the whole,
sentence, and of the constructive parts — such as noun an
swering to noun, verb to verb, member to member, negative
to negative, interrogative to interrogative,
" Praise ye Jehovah, ye of the earth ;
Ye sea-monsters, and all deeps :
Fire and hail, snow and vapour ;
Stormy wind, executing his command :
Mountains, and all hills ;
Fruit-trees, and all cedars :
Wild beasts, and all cattle ;
Reptiles, and birds of wing :
Kings of the earth, and all peoples ;
Princes, and all judges of the earth :
Youths, and also virgins ;
Old men, together with the children :
Let them praise the name of Jehovah ;
For his name alone is exalted ;
His majesty, above earth and heaven," Psal. cxlviii. 7 — 13.
B

xviu PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
" With him is wisdom and might ;
To him belong counsel and understanding.
Lo ! he pulleth down, and it shall not be built ;
He encloseth a man, and he shall not be set loose.
Lo I he withholdeth the waters, and they are dried up ;
And he sendeth them forth, and they overturn the earth.
With him is strength, and perfect existence ;
The deceived, and the deceiver, are his. Job, xu. 13—16,
" Is such then the fast which I choose ;
That a man should afflict his soul for a day ?
Is it, that he should bow down his head like a bulrush ;
And spread sackcloth and ashes for his couch ?
Shall this be called a fast ;
And a day acceptable to Jehovah ? —
Is not this the fast that I choose ?
To dissolve the bands of wickedness ;
To loosen the oppressive burthens ;
To deliver those that are crushed by violence ;
And that ye should break asunder every yoke ?
Is it not to distribute thy bread to the hungry ;
And to bring the wandering poor into thy house ?
When thou seest the naked, that thou clothe him ;
And that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ?
Then shall thy light break forth like the morning ;
And thy wounds shall speedily be healed over :
And thy righteousness shall go before thee ;
And the glory of Jehovah shall bring up thy rear." Isa. Iviii. 5 — 8,
Of the constructive kind is most commonly the parallelism
of stanzas of three lines ; though they are soraetimes syno
nyraous throughout, and often have two lines synonymous;
examples of both which are above given. The following
are constructively parallel : —
" Whatsoever Jehovah pleaseth,
That doeth be in the heavens; and in the earth ;
In the sea, and in all the deeps :
Causing the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth ;
Making the lightnings with the rain ;
Bringing forth the wind out of his treasures." Psal., cxxxv. 6, 7.
" The Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear.
And I was not rebellious ;
Neither did I withdraw myself backward —
I gave my back to the smiters,

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xix
And my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair ;
My face I hid not from shame and spitting." Isa. 1. 5, 6.
" Thou shalt sow, but shall not reap ;
Thou shalt tread the olive, but shalt not anoint thee with oil ;
And the grape, but shalt not drink wine." Micah, vi. 16.
Of the sarae sort of parallelism are those passages fre
quent in the poetic books, where a definite number is twice
put for an indefinite ; this being followed by an enumera
tion of particulars, naturally throws the sentences into a
parallehsm, which cannot be of any other than the synthetic
kind. This seems to have been a favourite ornament. There
are many elegant examples of it in the xxxth chapter of
Proverbs, to which I refer the reader ; and shall here give
one or two frora other places.
" These six things Jehovah hateth ;
And seven are the abomination of his soul : —
Lofty eyes, and a lying tongue ;
And hands shedding innocent blood :
A heart fabricating wicked thoughts ;
Feet hastily running to mischief:
A false witness breathing out lies ;
And the sower of strife between brethren." Prov. vi. 16 — 19.
" Give a portion to seven, and also to eight ;
For thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth."
Eccl. xi. 2,
" These two things have befallen thee ; who shall bemoan thee ?
Desolation and destruction, the famine and the sword ; who
shall comfort thee ?" Isa, Ii, 19,
that is, taken alternately, desolation by famine, and de
struction by the sword. Of which alternate construction I
shall add a reraarkable example or two, where the parallel
ism arises from the alternation of the members of the sen
tences : —
" I am black, but yet beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem :
Like the tents of Kedar ; like the pavilions of Solomon," Cant, i, 5.
that is, black as the tents of Kedar, (made of dark-colour
ed goats hair) ; beautiful as the pavilions of Solomon,
" On her house-tops, and to her open streets.
Every one howleth, descendeth with weeping," Isa, xv, 3,

Jit PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
that is, every one howleth on her house-tops, and descend
eth with weeping to her open streets.
The reader will observe in the foregoing examples, that
though there are perhaps no two lines corresponding one
with another as equivalent, or opposite in terms; yet there
is a parallelism equally apparent, and almost as striking,
which arises from the similar form and equality of the lines,
from the correspondence of the members and the construc
tion ; the consequence of which is a harmony and rhythm
httle inferior in effect to that of the two kinds preceding.
The degrees of the correspondence of the lines in this last
sort of parallels must, from the nature of it, be various,
Soraetimes the parallelism is more, sometimes less exact;
sometimes hardly at all apparent. It requires indeed parti
cular attention, much study of the genius of the language,
much habitude in the analysis of the construction, to be able
in all cases to see and to distinguish the nice rests and
pauses which ought to be made, in order to give the period
or the sentence its intended turn and cadence, and to each
part its due time and proportion. The Jewish critics,
called -the Masoretes, were exceedingly attentive to their
language in this part, even to a scrupulous exactness and
subtile refinement, as it appears from that extremely compli
cated system of grammatical punctuation, more embarrass
ing than useful, which they have invented. It is therefore
not improbable, that they might have had some insight into
this matter ; and, in distinguishing the parts of the sentence
by accents, might have had regard to the harmony of the
period and the proportion of the members, as well as to the
strict gramraatical disposition of the 'constructive parts. Of
this, I think, I perceive evident tokens ; for they sometimes
seem to have more regard in distributing the sentence to
the poetical or rhetorical harmony of the period, and the
proportion of the merabers, than to the grammatical con
struction. To explain what I mean, I shall here give some
examples, in which the Masoretes, in distinguishing the sen
tence into its parts,- have given marks of pauses perfectly
agreeable to the poetical rhythra, but such as the gramma
tical construction does not require, and scarcely admits.
Though It IS a difficult matter to know the precise quantity
of time which they allot to every distinctive point ; for it
depends on the relation and proportion which it bears to
the whole arrangement of points throughout the sentence ¦

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xxi
and though it is impossible to express the great variety of
them by our scanty system of punctuation — yet I shall en
deavour to mark them out to the English reader, in a rude
manner, so as to give him some notion of what I imagine it
to haye been their design to express. Thus then they dis
tinguish the following sentences : —
" And they that recompense evil for good ;*
Are mine adversaries, because I follow what is good."
Psal. xxxviii. 20.
" Upon Jehovah, in my distress ;*
I called, and he heard me."
" Long hath my soul had her dwelling ;*
With him that hateth peace," Psal, cxx, 1, 6.
" I love Jehovah, for he hath heard ;*
The voice of my supplication,
I will walk, before Jehovah ;*
In the land of the living.
What shall I return unto Jehovah ;*
For all the benefits which he hath bestowed on me ?
My vows I will pay to Jehovah ;* ¦
Now in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the eyes of Jehovah ;*
Is the death of his saints," Psal, cxvi, 1, 9, 12, 14, 13,
" Yea the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof, f
Shall not send forth their light," Isa, xiii, 10,
" In that day, shall his strongly fenced cities become,!
Like the desertion of the Hivites and the Amorites,' Isa, xvii, 9,
" For the glorious name of Jehovah shall be unto us,f
A place of confluent streams, of broad rivers." Isa, xxxiii, 21,
*' That she hath received at the hand of Jehovah,-]-
Double of the punishment of all her sins," Isa, xl, 2,
Of the three different sorts of parallels, as above explain
ed, every one hath its peculiar character and proper effect ;
• Athnac. t- Zakeph-katon. J: Rebiah.
Athnac in the three metrical books, as the Jews account them, is but the third
in order of power among the distinctive points ; but, however, always takes
place when the period is of two members only ; in all the other books he is
second : in the latter, therefore, Bebiah and Zakeph-katon, which come next to
Athnac, have nearly the same distinctive power as Athnac has in the former.
They will scarce be thought over-rated at a comma.

xxii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
and therefore they are differently employed on different
occasions; and that sort of parallelism is chiefly maoe use
of which is best adapted to the nature of the subject ana oi
the poem. Synonymous parallels have the appearance ot
art and concinnity, and a studied elegance: they prevail
chiefly in shorter poems; in many of the Psalms; in lia-
laara's prophecies; frequently in those of Isaiah, which are
most of them distinct poems of no great length, Ihe an
tithetic parallelism gives an acuteness and force to adages
and moral sentences; and therefore, as I observed before,
abounds in Solomon's Proverbs, and elsewhere is not often
to be met with. The poem of Job, being on a large plan,
and in a high tragic style, though very exact in the division
of the lines, and in the parallelism, and affording many fine
examples of the synonymous kind, yet consists chiefly of the
constructive, A happy mixture of the several sorts gives an
agreeable variety; and they serve mutually to recommend
and set off one another,
I mentioned above, that there appeared to be two sorts
of Hebrew verses, differing from one another in regard to
their length : the examples hitherto given, are all, except
one, of the shorter kind of verse. The longer, though they
admit of every sort of parallelism, yet belonging for the
most part .to the last plass, that of constructive parallels, I
shall treat of them in this place, and endeavour to explain
the nature, and to point out the marks of them, as fully and
exactly as I can.
This distinction of Hebrew verses into longer and shorter,
"is founded on the authority of the alphabetical poems ; one
third of the whole number of which are manifestly of the
longer sort of verse, the rest of the shorter. I do not pre
sume exactly to define by the number of syllables, supposing
we could with some probability determine it, the limit that
separates one sort of verse from the other, so that every
verse exceeding or falling short of that number should be
always accounted a long or a short verse ; all that I affirm
is this, — that one of the three poems perfectly alphabetical,
and therefore infallibly divided into its verses ; and three of
the nine other alphabetical poems, divided into their verses,
after the manner of the perfectly alphabetical, with the
greatest degree of probability ; that these four poems, being
the four first Lamentations of Jeremiah, fall into verses

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xxiii
about one-third longer, taking them one with another, than
those of the other eight alphabetical poems. I sh'aU first
give an example of these long verses from a poem perfectly
alphabetical, in which therefore the limits of the verses are
unerringly defined : —
" I am the man that hath seen affliction, by the rod of his
anger :
He hath led me, and made me walk, in darkness, not in
light:
Even again turneth he his hand against me, all the day long.
He hath made old my flesh and my skin, he hath broken my
bones :
He hath built against me, and hath compassed me, with gall
and travail :
He hath made me dwell in dark places, as the dead of old,"
Lam, iii, 1 — 6,
The following is from the first Lamentation, in which the
stanzas are defined by initial letters, and are, like the for
mer, of three lines : —
" How doth the city solitary sit, she that was full of people I
How is she become a widow, that was great among the na
tions !
Princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary 1
She weepeth sore in- the night, and her tear is upon her
cheek :
She hath none to comfort her, among all her lovers :
All her friends have betrayed her, they became her ene
mies." Lam, i, 1, 2.
I shall now give exaraples of the same sort of verse, where
the liraits of the verses are to be collected only from the
poetical construction of the sentences ; — and first from the
books acknowledged on all hands to be poetical; and of
these we must have recourse to the Psalms only, for I be
lieve there is not a single instance of this sort of verse to be
found in the poem of Job, and scarce any in the Proverbs
of Solomon.
" The law of Jehovah is perfect, restoring the soul ;
The testimony of Jehovah is sure, making wise the simple :
The precepts of Jehovah are right, rejoicing the heart ;
The commandment of Jehovah- is clear, enlightening the
eyes:
The fear of Jehovah is pure, enduring for ever ;

xxiv PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
The judgments of Jehovah are truth ; they are altogether
righteous:
More desirable than gold, and than much fine gold ; ^^
And sweeter than honey, and the dropping of honey-combs.
•' Psahxix. 7 — 10.
"That our sons may be like plants, growing up in their
youth ;
¦ Our daughters like the corner-pillars, carved for the struc
ture of a palace :
Our store-houses full, producing all kinds of provision :
Our flocks bringing forth thousands, ten thousands in our
fields :
Our oxen strong to labour ; no irruption, no captivity ;
And no outcry in our streets." Psal. cxliv. 12 — 14.
" Oh ! how great is thy goodness which thou hast treasured
up, for them that fear thee ;
Which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee, before
the sons of men I
Thou wilt hide them in the secret place of thy presence,
from the vexations of man ;
Thou wilt keep them safe in the tabernacle, from the strife
of tongues." Psal. xxxi. 19, 20.
" A sound ofa multitude in the mountains, as of many people;
A sound of the tumult of kingdoms, of natrons gathered to
gether :
Jehovah God of Hosts mustereth the host for the battle.
They come from a distant land, from the end of heaven ;
Jehovah ' and the instruments of his wrath, to destroy the
whole land." Isa. xiii. 4, 5.
" They are turned backward, they are utterly confounded,
who trust in the graven image ;
Who say unto the molten image, ye are our gods I"
Isa. xhi. 17.
" They are ashamed, they are even confounded, his * adver
saries, all of them ;
Together they retire in confusion, the fabricators of images :
But Israel shall be saved in Jehovah, with eternal salvation ;
Ye shall not be ashamed, neither shall ye be confounded, to
the ages of eternity." Isa. xlv. 16, 17.
These examples, all , except the two first, are of long
verses thrown in irregularly, but with design, between
* See the note on the place.

PRELIMINARV DISSERTATION. xxv
verses of another sort; among which they stand out, as it
were, somewhat distinguished in regard to their matter as
well as their form.
I think I perceive some peculiarities in the cast and
structure of these verses, which mark them, and distinguish
them from those of the other sort. The closing pause of
each line is generally very full and strong ; and in each line
coramonly, towards the end, at least beyond the middle of
it, there is a .small rest or interval, depending on the sense
and grammatical construction, which I would call a half-
pause. The conjunction i, the common particle of connexion,
which abounds in the Hebrew language, and is very often
used without any necessity at all, seems to be frequently and
studiously omitted at the half-pause ; the remaining clause
being added, to use a gramraatical term, by apposition to
some word preceding ; or coming in as an adjunct, or cir
cumstance depending on the forraer part, and corapleting
the sentence. This gives a certain air to these verses,
which may be esteemed in some sort as characteristic of the
kind. The first four Lamentations are four distinct poems, con
sisting uniformly and entirely of* the long verse, which may
therefore be properly called the Elegiac verse — ifrora those
elegies, which give the plainest and the most undoubted ex
amples of it. There may perhaps be found raany other
very probable examples in the sarae kind ; but this is what I
cannot pretend to determine with any certainty. Such, I
think, are the 42d and 43d Psalms ; which I imagine make
' In the second Lamentation, the second line of the fourth period is deficient
in length ; and so likewise is the 31st verse of the third Lamentation. In the
former, two words are lost out of the text ; in the latter, one. This will plainly
appear by supplying those words from the Chaldee paraphrase, which has hap
pily preserved them. They prove their own genuineness by making the lines
of a just length, and by completely restoring the sense ; which in the former is
otherwise not unexceptionable, in the latter manifestly imperfect. I will add
the lines, with the words supplied included in crotchets.
" And he slew [every youth] all that were desirable to the eye. ''
" For the Lord will not cast oflr[his servants] for ever.''

xxri PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
one entire poem,* aiid ought not to have been divided into
two Psalms: the lines are all of the longer kind, except the
third line of the intercalary stanza three times inserted;
which third line, hke that at the close of an exanaple given
above from the 144th Psalm, is of the shorter kind of verse,
somewhat like the Paroemiac verse of the Greeks, which
commonly makes the close of a set of Anapaestic verses.
Such likewise may perhaps be the lOIst Psalm, which seems
to consist of fourteen long verses, or seven distichs, thus di
vided : —
" Mercy and judgment will I celebrate ; to thee, O Jehovah,
will I sing.
I will act circumspectly in the perfect way ; when wilt thou
come unto me ?
I will walk with a perfect heart, in the midst of my house ;
I will, not set before mine eyes, a wicked thing :
Him that dealeth unfaithfully, I hate ; he shall not cleave
unto me ;
A perverse heart shall remove from me ; the wicked I will not
know.
Whoso slandereth in secret his friend, him will I destroy.
The lofty of eyes, and the proud of heart, him I will not en
dure.
Mine eyes shall be On the faithful of the land, that they may
dwell with me :
Whoso walketh in the perfect way, he shall minister unto me.
He shall not dwell within my house, who practiseth deceit.
He that speaketh falsehood, shall not be established in my
sight.
Every morning will I destroy all the wicked of the land ;
To cut off, from the city of Jehovah, all the workers of ini
quity,"
The sublime ode of Isaiah in the I4th chapter is all of
this kind of verse, except, perhaps, a verse or two towards
the end ; and the prophecy against Senacherib in the 37th
chapter, as far as it addressed Senacherib himself,
I venture to submit to the judgment of the candid reader
the preceding observations, upon a subject which hardly
admits of proof and certainty ; which is rather a matter of
opinion and of taste, than of science ; especially in the latter
* '^''i^ conjecture, offered some years ago, has-since been confirmed by twen
ty-two M.SS, which join them together.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xxvii
part, which endeavours to establish, and to point out the dif
ference of two sorts of verse, the longer and the shorter. For
though the third Lamentation of Jeremiah gives a clear and
indubitable example of the elegiac or long verse, and the two
Psalms perfectly alphabetical of the shorter ; yet the whole
art of Hebrew versification, except only what appears in the
construction of the sentences, being totally lost, it is not easy
to try by them other passages of verse, so as to draw any
certain conclusion in all cases, whether they are of the sarae
kind or not : And that, for this among other reasons ; be
cause what I call the half-pause, which I think prevails for
the most part in the longer verses, is sometimes so strong
and so full in the middle of the line, that it seems naturally
to resolve it into a distich of two short verses, I readily
therefore acknowledge, that in setthng the distribution of
the lines, or verses, in the following translation, I have had
frequent doubts, and particularly in determining the long
and short verses, I am still uncertain in regard to many
places, whether two lines ought not to be joined to make one,
or one line divided into two. But whatever doubts may re-
. main concerning particulars, yet^ upon the whole, I should
hope that the method of distribution here proposed, of sen
tences into stanzas and verses in the poetical books of Scrip
ture, will appear to have sorae foundation, and even to carry
with it a considerable degree of probability. Though no
coraplete system of rules concerning this matter can perhaps
be formed, which will hold good in every particular; yet
this way of considering the subject raay have its use, in fur
nishing a principle of interpretation of some consequence,
in giving a general idea of the style and character of the'
Hebrew poetry, and in shewing the close conformity of style
and character between great part of the prophetical writings,
and the other books of the Old Testament universally ac
knowledged to be poetical.
And that the reader may not think his pains wholly lost,
in labouring through this long disquisition concerning sen
tences and members of sentences, in weighing words and
balancing periods, I shall endeavour to shew him something
of the use and application of the preceding observations ;
and to convince him, that this branch of criticism, minute
as it may appear, yet merits the attention of the translator
and of the interpreter of the Holy Scriptures ; so large a part

xxviii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
of which is entirely poetical, ahd where occasional pieces
of poetry are interspersed through the whole.
It is incumbent on every translator to study the manner
of his author; to mark the peculiarities of his style, to imi
tate his features, his air, his gesture, and, as far as the M-4
ference of language will permit, even his voice ; in a word,
to give a just and expressive resemblance of the original.
If he does not carefuUy attend to this, he will sometimes fail
of entering into his meaning ; he will always exhibit him un
like himself— in a dress, that will appear strange and unbe
coming to all that are in any degree acquainted with him.
Sebastian Castellio stands in the first rank for critical abili
ties and theological learning among the modern translators
of Scripture ; but by endeavouring to give the whole compo
sition of his translation a new castj to throw it out of the
Hebrew idiom, and to make it adopt the Latin phrase and
structure in its stead, he has given us something that is
neither Hebrew nor Latin: the Hebrew manner is destroyed,
and the Latin manner is not perfectly acquired ; we regret
the loss of the Hebrew simplicity, and we are disgusted with
the perpetual affectation of Latin elegance. This is in ge
neral the case, but chiefly in the poetical parts. Take the
following for a specimen.
" Quum Israelitae ex jEgypto, quum Jacobaea domus emigraret
ex populo barbaro,
Judsei Israelitae Deo fuere sanctitati atque potestati.
Quo viso, mare fugit, et Jordanis retrocessit.
Montes arietum, colles ove natorum ritu exiliverunt."
Surely to this even the barbarism of the Vulgate is pre
ferable ; for though it has no elegance of its own, yet it still
retains the form, and gives us some idea of the force and
spirit of the Hebrew. I will subjoin it here, for it needs not
fear the comparison.
" In exitu Israel de .Slgypto, domus Jacob de populo barbaro,
Facta est Judaea sanctificatio ejus, Israel potestas ejus.
Mare vidit, et fugit : Jordanis conversus est retrorsum.
Montes exultaverunt ut arietes : et colles sicut agni ovium,"
Flatness and insipidity will generally be the consequence
of a deviation from the native manner of an original, which
has a real merit and a peculiar force of its own : for it will
be very difficult to compensate the loss of this by any adven-

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xiix
titious ornaments. To express fully and exactly the sense
of the author is indeed the principal, but not the whole duty
of the translator. In a work of elegance and genius, he is
not only to inform, he must endeavour to please ; and to
please by the sarae means, if possible, by which his author
pleases. If this pleasure arises in a great measure from the
shape of the coraposition and the form of the construction,
as it does in the Hebrew poetry perhaps beyond any other
example whatsoever, the translator's eye ought to be always
intent upon this : to neglect this, is to give up all chance of
success, and all pretension to it. The importance of the sub
ject, and the consequent necessity of keeping closely to the
letter of the original, has confined the translators of Scrip
ture within such narrow limits, that they have been forced,
whether they designed it or not, and even sometimes con
trary to their design, as in the case of Castellio, to retain
much of the Hebrew manner. This is remarkably the case
in our vulgar translation, the constant use of which has ren
dered this manner familiar and agreeable to us. We have
adopted the Hebrew taste ; and what is with judgment, and
upon proper occasion, well expressed in that taste, hardly ever
fails to suggest the ideas of beauty, solemnity, and elevation.
To shew the difference in this respect, I shall here give an
example or two of a free and loose translation, yet suffi
ciently well expressing the sense, contrasted with another
translation of the same, as strictly literal as possible,
1, " The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done his mar
vellous works, that they ought to be had in remembrance,"
Psal, cxi, 4, Old Version,
2, " Lo ! children and the fruit of the womb are an heritage
and gift, that cometh from the Lord," Psal, cxxvii,4, O, V,
3, " O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of
man ; for there is no help in them,
" For when the breath of man goeth forth, he shall turn again
to his earth ; and then all his thoughts perish,
4, " The Lord thy God, O Sion, shall be king for evermore,
and throughout all generations," Psal, cxlvi, 2, 3, 10, O, V.
1, " He hath made a memorial of Iiis wonders : gracious and
of tender mercy is Jehovah,"
2. " Behold, an heritage from Jehovah are children ; a re
ward, the fruit of the womb."

XXX PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
3, " Trust ye not in princes ; in the son of man, in whom is
no salvation, . ,
" His breath goeth forth ; he returneth to his earth ; in that
day his thoughts perish. /-, o- r
4, " Jehovah shall reign for ever ; thy God, O bion, trom
age to age."
The former examples are mere prose ; the latter retain
the outlines and the features of the original Hebrew, and
frora that cause alone are still poetry.
But this strict attention to the form and fashion of the
composition of the sacred writings of the Old Testament
is not only useful, and even necessary, in the translator
who is ambitious of preserving in his copy the force,
and spirit, and elegance of the original; it will be of
great use to hira likewise merely as an interpreter, and
will often lead him into the meaning of obscure words
and phrases: soraetimes it wiU suggest the true reading,
where the text in our present copies is faulty; and will
verify and confirm a correction offered on the authority
of MSS, or of the ancient versions. I shall add a few ex
amples, as evidences of what is here advanced. One short
passage of Isaiah will furnish a number sufficient for our
purpose ; and the observant reader will find several more in
the version and notes subjoined.
"Wherefore hear ye the word of Jehovah, ye scoffers;
Ye who to this people in Jerusalem utter sententious speeches.
Who say, We have entered into a covenant with death ;
And with the grave we have made a treaty, 
But your covenant with death shall be broken ;
And your treaty with the grave shall not stand,"
Isa, xxviii. 14, 15. 18.
'bwn, ye that rule this people, says our version; and so the
generality of interpreters ancient and modern. But this
prophecy is not addressed to the rulers of the people, nor
is it at all concerned with them in particular, but is directed
to the Ephraimites in general ; and this part to the scoffers
among them, who ridiculed the denunciations of the pro
phets, by giving out parabohcal sentences, and solemn
speeches, soniewhat in the prophetic style, in opposition to
their prophecies ; of which speeches he gives specimens in the
next verse, as he had done before in the 9th and 10th verses.
'bwn therefore is parallel and synonymous to pjtb ^iViK,

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xxxi
scoffers ; and is not to be translated rulers, but to be taken
in the other sense of the word, and rendered, " those that
speak parables." And larchi in this place very properly
explains it, " qui dicunt verba irrisionis parabohce."
The next verse gives us an instance still more remarkable
of the influence which the parallelism has in determining
the sense of words :
" We have entered into a covenant with death ;
And with the grave we have made  "
what ? Every one must answer imrae"diately, an agreement,
a bargain, a treaty, or something to the same sense : and so
in effect say all the versions, ancient and modern. But the
word ntn raeans no such thing in any part of the Bible;
(except in the 1 8th verse of this chapter, here quoted, where
it is repeated in the sarae sense, and nearly in the same
form) ; nor can the lexicographers give any satisfactory
account of the word in this sense ; wliich however they are
forced to admit from the necessity of the case ; " Recte verto
vocem ntrr, perinde ac nirn, v. 18. transactionem, licet
neutra hac significatione alibi occurrat : circurastantia enira
orationis earn necessario exigit;" says the learned Vitringa
upon the place. It could not otherwise have been known
that the word had this meaning ; it is the parallelism alone
that determines it to this meaning ; and that so clearly, that
no doubt at all remains concerning the sense of the passage.
Again : —
" And your covenant with death shall le broken :"
But isa raeans to cover, to cover sin, and so to expiate, &c.
and is never used in the sense of breaking or dissolving a
covenant, though that notion so often occurs in the Scrip
tures ; nor can it be forced into this sense, but by a great
deal of far-fetched reasoning. Besides, it ought to be niS3,
or iBsn, in the feminine form, to agree with nni. So
that the word, as it stands, makes neither graramar nor
sense. There is great reason therefore to suspect some mis
take in our present copy. The true reading is probably
isn, differing by one letter. So conjectured Houbigant;
and so Archbishop Seeker : and I find their conjecture con
firmed by the Chaldee paraphrast, who renders it by b isa,
the word which he generally uses in rendering this common

x^isii .. PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
phrase, nna n>i)n. And this reading is stUl further con-^
firmed by the parallelism; for isn, shall be broken, in the
first line, is parallel and synonymous to t=jipn vh, shall not
stand, in the second.
The very same phrases are parallel and synonyraous, Isa,
viii, 10.
" Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought, ism ;
Speak the word, and it shall not stand, Oip' Nbl."
I shall add one example more ; and that of a reading
suggested by the parallelism, and destitute of all authority
of MSS, or ancient versions.
" But mine enemies living are numerous ;
And they that hate me wrongfully are multiplied." Psal. xxxviii, 19.
The word t3'''irr, living, seems not to belong to this place ;
besides, that the construction of it in the Hebrew is very
unusual and inelegant. The true reading in all probability
-is ^iin, .without cause; parallel and synonymous to ipli7,
•wrongfully, in the next line, (as in Psal, xxxv, 19,) ; which
completes the parallelism through both lines. Let the
reader compare Psal, Ixix. 5. where the very same three'
terms in each line are set parallel to one another, just in the
same manner as I suppose they must have been originally
here. Which place likewise furnishes another example in
the sarae kind : for a fourth terra being there introduced in
each line, the fourth term in the last line has been corrupted
by the small mistake of inserting a ' in the middle of it. It
has been well restored by a conjecture of the learned' and
ingenious Bishop Hare,
" They that hate rae without cause are multiplied beyond the
hairs of my head ;
They that are mine enemies wrongfully are more numerous
than the hairs of my locks,"
For 'ninsn, isjlio destroy me, read inTisn, more than my locks,
parallel to iitni niiriyn, more than the hairs of my head, in
the first line. The Bishop's conjecture is sincp confirmed
by seven MSS,
Thus two inveterate mistakes, which have disgraced the
text above two thousand years, (for they are prior to die

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. , xxxiii
version of the Seventy), are happily corrected, and that, I
think, beyond a doubt, by the parallelisra supported by the
example of similar passages.
Rabbi Azaeias,* a learned Jew of the sixteenth century,
has treated of the ancient Hebrew versification upon prin
ciples similar to those above proposed, and partly coincident
with them : he makes the form of the verse to depend on
the structure of the sentence, and the measures in every
verse to be determined by the several parts of the proposi
tion. As he is the only one of the Jewish writers, who ap
pears to have had any just idea at all of this matter ; as his
system seems to be well founded ; and as his observations
may be of use on the present occasion, both by giving some
degree of authority to the hypothesis above explained, and
by setting the subject in a light sdmewhat different, — I shall
here give the reader at large his opinion upon it.
This author, in a large work entitled Meor Enajim, (that
is, The light of the Eyes), containing a great variety of mat
ter, historical, critical, and philosophical, takes occasion to
treat of the Hebrew poetry in a separate chapter ; of which
the younger Buxtorf has given a Latin translation, j-
" Azarias finding little satisfaction in what former writers
had said upon the subject; whether those who make the
Hebrew verse consist of a certain number of syllables and
certain feet, like that of the Greeks and Latins ; or those
who exclude all metre, and make the harmony of their verse
to arise from accents, tones, and musical modulations ; which
latter opinion he thinks agreeable to truth ; — and having con
sulted the most learned of his nation without being able to
obtain any solution of his difficulties ; for they allowed that
there was a sensible difference between the songs and the
other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures when they were read ;
* R. Azarias Min Haadumim, i. n. de Rubeis, or Rossi, of Ferrara, finish
ed his treatise entitled Meor Enajim, A. D. 1573, and published itat Mantua,
the place of his birth, 1574. Wolfii Biblioth. Hebrsa, vol. i. p. 944.
f Mantissa Dissertationum, p. 415. at the end of his edition of Cosri.
Suspecting, from some obscurities, that Buxtorf 's translation was not very
accurate, I procured the original edition ; and, having carefully examined it,
I corrected from it this account of the author's sentiments.

xxxiv PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
a kind of metrical sweetness in the former, which the latter
had not; but whence that difference arose no one could ex
plain ; — in this state of uncertainty, he long considered the
matter, endeavouring to obtain some satisfaction in his in
quiries. He at last came to the following determination
upon it : — That the sacred songs have undoubtedly certain
measures and proportions ; which, however, do not consist
in the number of syllables, perfect or imperfect, according
to the form of the modern verse which the Jews make use
of, and which is borrowed from the Arabians; (though the
Arabic prosody, he observes, is too complicated to be ap
plied to the Hebrew language) ; but in the number of things,
and of the parts of things, — that is, the subject, and the pre^
dicate, and their adjuncts, in every sentence and proposition.
Thus a phrase, containing two parts of a proposition, con
sists of two measures ; add another containing two more, and
they become four measures : another again, containing three
parts of a proposition, consists of three measures ; add to it
another of the like, and you have six measures.
" For example; in the Song of Moses, " Thy-right-hand,
O-Jehovah," is a phrase consisting of two terms, or parts of
a proposition ; to which is connected, " is=-glorious in^power,"
consisting likewise of two terms : these joined together make
four measures, or a tetrameter: « Thy-right-hand, O-
Jehovah," repeated, makes two more; " hath-crushed the-
enemy," two more ; which, together, make four measures, or
a second tetrameter. So likewise,
'* The-enemy said, I-will-pursue, I-will-overtake ;
I-will-divide the-spoil ; my-lust shall-be-satisfied-upon-them j
Lwill-draw my-sword ; my-harid shall-destroy-them ;
Thou-didst-blow with-thy-wind ; the-sea covered-them,"
" The Song of Deuteronomy consists of propositions of
three parts, or three measures; which, doubled in the same
manner, raake six, or hexameters : thug,
*' Hearken, O-heavens, and-I-wilNspeak ; and-Iet-the-earth hear
the-words-of-my-mouth :*
^the-°dew"^ shall-drop, as-the-r^in ; my-word shall-distil, as
• Two words joined together by maccaph are considered as a sin^rle word
PCCOrdmg to the laws of punctuation ; so ^B-n»N is one word

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xxxt
" Sometimes in the same period, much raore in the same
song, these two kinds meet together, according to the divine
irapulse moving the prophet, and as the variety suited his
design, and the nature of the subject. For example, —
" And-by-the-blast of-thy-nostrils, the-waters were-compress-
ed ;"
These are each two measures, which together make a tetra
meter : it foUows, —
" The-floods stood-upright, as-in-a-heap :
The-deeps were-congealed in-the-heart-of-the-sea :" *
These are two truneters, which make an hexameter. So the
Song of the Well begins with trimeters; to which are after
wards subjoined f dimeters. So in the prayer of Habakkuk
the verses are trimeters ; —
" God came from-Teman ;
And-the-Holy-One from the-mount-of-Paran J Selah.
His-glory covered the-heavens ;
And-his-splendour filled the-earth,"
" The author proceeds to observe, that in some verses
certain words occur which make no part of the measures, or
are not taken into the account of the verse ; as in the Song
of Deuteronomy : —
" And-he-said,
I-will-hide my-face from-them :"
The word, " And-h&-said,")| stands by itself, — and the re
maining words make a trimeter : —
* D^'ibi, one word.
f The Song of the Well, Numb. ixxi. 17, 18. according to our way of fixing
the conclusion of it, and if we measure It by Azarias's rules, consists of three
trimeters and one dimeter only. But the Targum of Onkelos continues the
song to the end of the 20th verse, taking in the catalogue of stations, (as we
understand it), which immediately follows, as part of the song ; and interpret
ing it as such. Azarias follows his authority : so Aben Tybbon, (see Cozri,
p, 431.), and larchi upon the place. At Uiis rate we shall have half a dozen
dimeters more.
I ^"lNS"'ini3, (fi-om-the-mount-of-Paran), being joined by moccajjA, and
so making but one word, the author is obliged to take in Selah as part of the
verse, to make out his third term or measure. The authority of the Masoretic
maccaph has led him into an error. The verse without Selah is a trimeter; as
it ought to be in conformity with the rest.
11 So far the observation seems to be just ; and perhaps there may be two
more examples of it in the same poem, ver. 26. and 37. ; where, according to

xxxvi PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
" I-will-see, what-is their-latter-end,"
is the trimeter answering to it. So in the prayer of Habak
kuk:— " O-Jehovah,
I-have-heard thy-speech ; I-was afraid ;
O-Jehovah, . , „ , "*
Revive thy-work irt-the-midst-of-the-years : *
The word, « O-Jehovah," is twice to be read separate; and
the words added to it make a trimeter. But this verse,
" Though the-fig-tree shall-not blossom,"
is of a different sort, consisting of the subject and predicate :
« Though the fig-tree," being the subject; " shall not blos
som," the predicate. So in a verse containing twelve terms,
those terras may be reduced to six measures. For you are
not to reckon, either the syllables, or the words, but only
the things. And for this reason a particle is often joined
to the word next to it. The verses of the Psalms observe
the same order : —
" Have-mercy-upon-me, 0-God, according-to-thy-goodness ;
According-to-the-multitude-of-thy-mercies, f blot-out my-
transgressions,"
Azarias's doctrine, the words, I said. And he shall say, may conveniently
enough be considered as making no part of the verse. So in Isaiah, the com
mon forms. Thus saith Jehovah, And it shalt come to pass in that day, and the
like, probably are not always to be reckoned as making part of the measure.
The period 0 in the 4th Lamentation cannot well be divided into two lines, as
it ought to be; but if the words "inb 1N"1p, they cried unto them, and
D^lii linX, they said among the heathen, are excluded from the measure,
the remainder will make two lines of just length ; —
" Depart, ye are polluted, depart ; depart ye, forbear to touch :
Yea, they are fled, they are removed; they shall dwell here no more."
Or perhaps they may be two marginal interpretations, which by mistake have
got into the text ; which, I think, is better without them. So likewise. Lam.
ii. 15. the word I'lttN^iy, of-iohidi-tliey-said, either does not reckon in the
verse, which with it is too long ; or, as I rather think, should be omitted, as an
interpolation. * In order to make out the trimeter, it is necessary to suppose that Aza
rias reads tJ^^WSlpi as one word.
•f Azarias takes the liberty of joining the two words "l^mnl ilTa together
by a maccaph, which is not to be found in our editions, in order to bring the
verse within his rules. The reader will observe, that this distich, which in the
Hebrew contains but seven words, cannot be rendered in English in less than

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xxxvii
These are trimeters. So likewise,
" In-God I-will-praise his-word ;
In-Jehovah I-will-praise his-word."
So likewise the Proverbs of Solomon,
" Wisdom crieth without ;
In-the-streets she-uttereth her-voice,"
" I am aware, adds he, that some verses are to be found,
which I cannot accommodate to these rules and forms ; and
perhaps a great number. But by observing these things,
the intelligent may perhaps receive new light, and discover
what has escaped me. However, they may be assured, that
all the verses that are found in the Sacred Writings ; such
as the Song at the Red Sea, of the Well, of Moses, of
Deborah, of David, of the Book of Job, the Psalms, and
the Proverbs ; all of them have an established order and
measure, different in different places, or even sometimes
different in one and the same poem ; — as we may perceive in
reading them an admirable propriety and fitness, though
we cannot arrive at the true method of measuring or scan
ning thera,
" It is not to be wondered, that the same song should
consist of different measures ; for the case is the sarae in the
poetry of the Greeks and Romans : they suited their mea
sures to the nature of the subject and the arguraent ; and
the variations which they admitted, were accommodated to
the motions of the body, and the affections of the soul.
Every kind of raeasure is not proper for every subject ; and
an ode, a panegyric, or a prayer, should not be composed
in the same measure vnth an elegy. Do not you observe,
says he, in the Book of Lamentations of Jereraiah, that the
periods of the first and second chapters each of them consist
of three propositions ; and every one of these of a subject,
and a predicate, and of the adjuncts belonging to thera ?
The third chapter follows the sarae method ; and for this
reason is placed next to them in order : but of this chapter
every period is distributed into three initial letters. But
the fourth chapter does not perfect the senses in every
one-and-twenty^words. By this he will judge, under what great disadvantage
all the foregoing examples, whether of the parallelism, or of the metre of things,
must appear in an English version, in which many words are almost always
necessary to render wljat is expressed by one word in Hebrew.

xxxviii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
verse;* but consists of two and two, whichmake four. But
the fifth chapter, which contains a prayer, you will find to
be built on another plan; that is, one and one, which make
two,+ or a diraeter; like the verses of the Books of Job,
Psalms, and Proverbs. So the Song of Moses, and the
Song of Deborah, have a different form ; consisting of three
and three, which make six; that is, hexameters; hke the
heroic measure, which is the noblest of all measures.
" Upon the whole, the author concludes, that the poetical
parts of the Hebrew Scriptures are not composed according
to the rules and measures of certain feet, dissyllables, tri
syllables, or the like, as the poems of the modern Jews are ;
but nevertheless have undoubtedly other measures which de
pend on things,:]: as above explained. For which reason,
they are more excellent than those which consist of certain
feet, according to' the number and quantity of syllables. Of
this, says he, you may judge yourself in the Songs of the
Prophets. For do you not see, if you translate some of them
into another language, that they still keep and retain their
measure, if not wholly, at least in part? which cannot be the
case in those verses, the measures of which arise from a cer
tain quantity and number of syllables."
• * He said above, that in the 1st and 2d chapters each separate verse, or line,
was a single proposition : he now says, that this is not the case in the 4th
chapter ; for it does not perfect the sense in every verse ; that is, each verse
does not consist of one single proposition. As, for example, the first Une or
verse— " How is obscured the gold! changed. the fine gold!"
" How is obscured | the gold !" makes one proposition, and two measures;
"changed | the fine gold I" another proposition, and two other measures;
which, according to him, make a tetrameter. This, he says, makes the diffe
rence between the three first and the 4th chapter. But there seems to be no
such difference ; many single lines in the three first containing two proposi
tions, and many in the 4th containing only one.
f According to the author's own definition of his terms, one and one which
make two, should mean, one term and one term making two measures, or a
dimeter : but the 5th chapter does not at all seem to answer that description.
Besides, he says, the verses of it are like those of Job, Psalms, and Proverbs,
of two of which books he said before, that the verses were trimeters. I know
not what he means, unless it be that one and one sentences make two, that is
a distich ; and that this chapter consists of distichs, of two short lines, as the
Books of Job, Psalms, and Proverbs, for the most part do ; which is true.
\ Perhaps the harraony might depend in some degree on both ; for it may
be often observed, that where the words of an hemistich happen to be longer,
and consequently to consist of more syllables than the words of the adjoining
hemistich, there the things expressed are fewer. See, for example, Psal. cviii.
4, 5. Which seems to prove, that the measures of the verses did not depend
on the things expressed only, but on the syllables also.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xxxix
Such is R. Azarias's hypothesis of the rhythmus of things;
that is, of terms and of senses ; of the gramraatical parts of
speech, and of the logical parts of propositions. The prin
ciple seems to be right ; but, I think, he has not raade the
best use, of which it was capable, in the application. He
acknowledges, that it will not hold in all cases. I believe,
there is no such thing to be found in the Hebrew Bible, as
a whole poem consisting of trimeters, tetrameters, or hexa
meters only, measured and scanned according to his rules.
The Song of Moses, Deut, xxxii, is a very apt example for
his purpose ; but will not in all parts faU in with his measures.
Besides, there is no sort of reason for his making it to con
sist of hexameters, rather than trimeter distichs ; such, as
he says, the Psalms and Proverbs consist of. Examine the
cxith and cxiith Psalms by his rules ; and though they will
fall into his trimeters for the most part pretty well, yet we
are sure, that these were not to be coupled together to make
hexameters ; for they are necessarily divided into twenty-two
distinct short lines by the initial letters. The Hebrew
poetry, consisting for the most part of short sentences, must
in general naturally fall into such measures as Azarias esta
blishes ; or with some manageraent raay be easily reduced
to his rules. Every proposition must consist 'of a subject
and a predicate, joined together by a copula; and the pre
dicate including the copula will generally consist of two
terms, expressing the action, and the thing acted upon. In
Hebrew, sometimes the subject is combined with the copula
in one word, and sometimes the predicate ; sometiraes all
three make but one term. In these cases, the addition of a
simple adjunct (for the shortness of the style wiU not admit
of ranch more) to the subject, or the predicate, or both,
furnishes a second, a third, and sometiraes a fourth term ;
that is, raakes the verse a dimeter, trimeter, or tetrameter.
For instance, in dimeters, —
" They-made-him-jealous, with-strange-Gods ;
They-provoked-him, with-abominations," Deut, xxxii, 16,
In trimeters, —
" I-will-bfess Jehovah, at-all-time ;
His-praise [shall be] in-my-moulh, continually,
My-soul shall-make-her-boast, in-Jehovah ;
The-meek ghall-hear-it, and-rejoice.

il PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION,
O-magnify-ye Jehovah, with-me ; -to
And-llt-us-praise his-name, together," Psal, xxxiv, 1-3.
In these examples, the first part of every line ma-kes an en
tire proposition, and the last is an adjunct making the se
cond, or the third, terra. In the following, the subject, and
the predicate, with their adjuncts, consist of two terms, each
of them: that is, of two measures ; and, being joined toge
ther, make a tetrameter : —
" The-counsel of-Jehovah shall-stand for-ever,"
The next fine is in the same form, except that the verb is
understood, and the latter adjunct divided into two terms;
and makes a second tetrameter to pair with the first : —
" The-thoughts of-his-heart, from-age to-age,"
Something of this kind must necessarily be the result of this
sententious way of writing : it is what comes of course, with
out much study. But whatever attention the Hebrew poets
might give to the scanning of their verses by the number of
terras, it does not appear to have been their design to con
fine all the verses of the same poem to any set nuraber of
terms ; whereas they do plainly appear to have studied to
throw the corresponding lines of the same distich into the
same number of terms, into the same form of construction,
and still more into an identity, or opposition, or a general
conformity of sense, I agree therefore with Azarias in his
general principle of a rhythmus of things : but instead of
considering terms, or phrases, or senses, in single lines, as
measures ; determining the nature and denomination of
the verse, as dimeter, trimeter, or tetrameter; I consider
only that relation and proportion of one verse to another,
which arises from the correspondence of terms, and from the
form of construction; from whence results a rhythraus of
propositions, and a harraony of sentences.
This peculiar conformation, of sentences ; short, concise,
with frequent pauses, and regular intervals, divided into
pairs, for the most part, of corresponding lines ; is the most
evident characteristic now remaining of poetry among the
Hebrews, as distinguished from prose : and this, I suppose,
is what is iraphed in the name, Mizmor ;* which I under-
ItMlTa, inr signifies to cnt, to prune, to sing, ia play on a musical in
strument. Casura is the common idea, which prevails in all.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xli

Stand to be the proper name for verse ; that is, for numerous,
rhythmical, or metrical language. This form made their
verse peculiarly fit for music and dance ; which with them
were the usual concoraitants of poetrj', on occasions of public
joy, and in the most solemn offices of religion,* Both their
dance and song were on such occasions performed by two
choirs f taking their parts alternately in each : the regular
forra of the stanzas, chiefly distichal, and the parallelism of
the lines, were excellently well suited to this purpose, and
fell in naturally with the movements of the body, of the
voice, and of the instruments, and with the division of the
parts between the two sets of performers.
But, beside the poetical structure of the sentences, there
are other indications of verse in the poetical and prophetical
parts of the Hebrew Scriptures': such are, peculiarities of
language ; unusual and foreign words ; phrases, and forms
of words, uncommon in prose; bold elliptical expression;
frequent and abrupt change of persons, and an use of the
tenses out of the comraon order; and lastly, the poetical
dialect, consisting chiefly in certain anoraalies peculiar to
poetry ; in letters and syllables added to the ends of words ;
a kind of license commonly permitted to poetry in every
language. But as these cannot be explained by a few ex
araples, nor perfecdy understood without sorae knowledge
of Hebrew ; I must beg leave to refer the learned reader,
who would inquire further into this subject, to what I have
said upon it in another place ;f or rather, to recommend it
to his own observation, in reading the sacred poets in their
own language.

Thus far of the genuine form and character of the Pro
phet's composition ; which it has been the translator's endea-
vour closely to follow, and as exactly to express, as the dif
ference of the languages woxdd permit : in which indeed he
has had great advantage in the habit, which our language
has acqiiired, of expressing with ease, and not without ele-
. gance, Hebrew ideas and Hebrew forms of speaking, from
* See Exod. xy. 20, 21. 2 Sam. vi. 14. 16.
f See 1 Sam. xviii. 6, 7. Ezra iii. II. Nehem. xii. 24. and Philo's Obser
vations ( risgi reafyias) on the Song at the Red Sea.
I De Sacra Poesi Hebrajorum, Prselect. iii. xiv. xv.

xiii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
our constant use of a close verbal translation of both the Old
and New Testament; which has by degrees moulded our
language into such a conformity with that of the origmal
Scriptures, that it can upon occasion assume the Hebrew
character without appearing altogether forced and unnatural.
It remains to say something of the Translation m regard to
its fidehty; and of the principles of interpretation by which
the translator has been guided in the prosecution of it.
The first and principal business of a translator, is to give
the plain literal and grammatical sense of his author ; the
obvious meaning of his words, phrases, and sentences; and
to express them in the language into which he translates, as
far as may be, in equivalent words, phrases, and sentences?)
Whatever indulgence may be allowed him in other respects ;
however excusable he may be, if he fail of attaining the ele
gance, the spirit, the sublimity of his author — which will
generally be in some degree the case, if his author excels at
all in those qualities ; want of fidelity admits of no excuse,
and is entitled to no indulgence. This is peculiarly so in
subjects of high importance, such as the Holy Scriptures, in
which so much depends on the phrase and expression ; and
particularly in the prophetical books of Scripture; where
from the letter are often deduced deep and recondite senses,
which must owe all their weight and solidity to the just and
accurate interpretation of the words of the prophecy. For
whatever senses are supposed to be included in the Prophet's
words, spiritual, mystical, allegorical, analogical, or the like,
they must all entirely depend on the literal sense. This
is the only foundation upon which siich interpretations can
be securely raised ; and if this is not firmly and well esta
blished, all that is built upon it will fall to the ground.
For example; ifiiaan Nina, Isa, Ii, xx, does not signify
a; nvrXicv iftti^hy, like parboiled bete, as the LXX render it ;
but like an oryx (a large, fierce, wild beast) in the toils ;
what becomes of Theodoret's explication of this image?
KccStvaovls^ aig a-tvrXioy V/finCpSov'^ 'Eott^iv ocvrav eto6 fA,iv th VTTva to pcc6vfiav,
dix h TS xujt^aiiii TO cevxv^fev. According to this interpretation,
the Prophet would express the drowsiness and flaccidity, the
slothfulness and want of spirit, of his countrymen : where
as his idea was impotent rage, and obstinate violence, sub
dued by a superior power ; the Jews taken in the snares of
their own wickedness, struggling in vain, till, overspent and

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. iliii
exhausted, they sink under the weight of God's judgments.
And Procopius's explication of the same passage, according
to the rendering of the words by Aquila, Symraachus, and
Theodotion, which is probably the true one, is almost as
foreign to the purpose : " He compares, saith he, the people
of Jerusalem to the oryx, that is, to a bird ,- because they
are taken in the snares of the devil, and therefore are de
livered over to wrath," Such strange and absurd deduc
tions of notions and ideas, foreign to the author's drift and
design, will often arise from the invention of commentators
who have nothmg but an inaccurate translation to work
upon. This was the case of the generality of the Fathers of
the Christian Church, who wrote comments on the Old
Testament: and it is no wonder, that we find thera of little
service in leading us into the true meaning and the deep
sense of the prophetical writings.
It being then a translator's indispensable duty faithfully
and religiously to express the sense of his author, he ought
to take great care that he proceed upon just principles of
criticism, in a rational method of interpretation ; and that
the copy from which he translates be accurate and perfect in
itself, or corrected as carefully as possible by the best autho
rities, and on the clearest result of critical inquiry.
The method of studying the Scriptures of the Old Testa
ment has been very defective hitherto in both these respects.
Beside the difficulties attending it, arising from the nature
of the thing itself, from the language in which it is written,
and the condition in which it is corae down to us through
so many ages ; what we have of it being the scanty relics of
a language formerly copious, and consequently the true
meaning of many words and phrases being obscure and du
bious, and perhaps incapable of being clearly ascertained ;
beside these impediments, necessarily inherent in the subject,
others have been thrown in the way of our progress in the
study of these writings, from prejudice, and an ill-founded
opinion of the authority of the Jews, both as interpreters
and conservators of them.
The Masoretic punctuation, by which the pronunciation of
the language is given, the forras of the several parts of speech,
the construction of the words, the distribution and limits of
the sentences, and the connexion of die several members
are fixed, is in effect an interpretation of the Hebrew text

xliv PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
made by the Jews of late ages, probably not earlier than
the eighth century; and may be considered as their trans
lation of the Old Testament, Where the words unpointed
are capable of various meanings, according as they may be
variously pronounced and constructed, the Jews by their
pointing have determined them to one meaning and con
struction ; and the sense which they thus give, is their sense
of the passage : just as the rendering, of a translator into
another .language is his sense; that is, the sense in which
in his opinion the original words are to be taken ; and it
has no other authority, than what arises from its being
agreeable to the rules of just interpretation. But because
in the languages of Europe the vowels are essential parts
of written words, a notion was too hastily taken up by the
learned, at the revival of letters, when the original Scriptures
began to be more carefully examined, that the vowel points
were necessary appendages of the Hebrew letters, and there
fore coeval with them ; at least, that they became absolutely
necessary when the Hebrew was become a dead language,
and must have been added by Ezra, who collected and
formed the canon of the Old Testament, in regard to all
the books of it in his time extant. On this supposition, the
points have been considered as part of the Hebrew text,
and as giving the meaning of it on no less than divine
authority. Accordingly our public translations in the mo
dern tongues for the use of the church araong Protestants,
and so likewise the modern Latin translations, are for the
most part close copies of the Hebrew pointed text, and
are in reality only versions at second hand, translations of
the Jews' interpretation of the Old Testament, We do not
deny the usefulness of this interpretation, nor would we be
thought to detract from its merit by setting it in this light :
it is perhaps, upon the whole, preferable to any one of the
ancient versions; it has probably the great advantage of
having been formed upon a traditionary explanation of the
text, and of being generally agreeable to that sense of Scrip
ture which passed current, and was commonly received by
the Jewish nation in ancient times; and it has. certainly
been of great service to the moderns, in leading thera into
the knowledge of the Hebrew tongue. But they would have
raade a much better use of it, and a greater progress in the
explication of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, had they
consulted it, without absolutely submitting to its authority;

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xlv
had they considered it as an assistant, not as an infallible
guide. To what a length an opinion lightly taken up, and era-
braced with a full assent, without due exaraination, may be
carried, we may see in another example of much the same
kind. The learned of the Church of Rorae, who have
taken the liberty of giving translations of Scripture in the
modern languages, have for the most part subjected and
devoted theraselves to a prejudice equally groundless and ab
surd. The Council of Trent declared the Latin translation
of the Scriptures called the Vulgate, which had been for
many ages in use in their church, to be authentic — a very
ambiguous term, which ought to have been more precisely
defined than the Fathers of this Council chose to define it.
Upon this ground many contended, that the Vulgate ver
sion was dictated by the Holy Spirit; at least was provi
dentially guarded against all error ; was consequently of
divine authority, and more to be regarded than even the
original Hebrew and Greek texts. And in effect the decree
of the Council, however limited and moderated by the ex
planation of some of their judicious divines, has given to' the
Vulgate such a high degree of authority, that, in this in
stance at least, the translation has taken place of the original :
for these translators, instead of the Hebrew and Greek texts,
profess to translate the Vulgate, Indeed, when they find the
Vulgate very notoriously deficient in expressing the sense,
they do the original Scriptures the honour of. consulting
thera, and take the liberty, by following them, of departing
from their authentic guide; but in general the Vulgate is
their original text, and they give us a translation of a trans
lation ; by which second transfusion of the Holy Scriptures
into another tongue, still more of the original sense raust
be lost, and more of the genuine spirit must evaporate.
The other prejudice, which has stood in the way, and
obstructed our progress in the true understanding of the
Old Testament — a prejudice even more unreasonable than
the former, is the notion that has prevailed of the great care
and skill of the Jews in preserving the text, and transmitting
it down to the present tiraes pure, and entirely free from all
mistakes, as it came from the hands of the authors. In
opposition to which opinion it has been often observed, that
such a perfect degree of integrity no human skill or care

xlvi PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION,
could warrant: it raust imply no less than a constant mira
culous superintendence of divine Providence, to guide the
hand of the copyist, and to guard him from error, in re
spect to every transcript that has been made through so
long a succession of ages. And it is universaUy acknow
ledged, that Ahnighty God has not thought such a mu:acu-
lous interposition necessary in regard to the Scriptures of
the New Testament, at least of equal authority and impor
tance with those of the Old : We plainly see, that he has not
exempted them from the common lot of other books; the
copies of these, as well as of other ancient writings, differ
ing in some degree from one another, so that no one of them
has any just pretension to be a perfect and entire copy,
truly and precisely representing in ef ery word and letter
the originals, as they came from the hands of the several
authors. All writings transmitted to us, like these, from
early tiraes, the original copies of which have long ago
perished, have suffered in their passage to us by the mistakes
of raany transcribers through whose hands we have received
them ; errors continually accumulating in proportion to the
number of transcripts, and the stream generally becoming
more impure, the more distant it is from the source. Now,
the Hebrew writings of the Old Testament being for much
the greater part the raost ancient of any ; instead of finding
thera absolutely perfect, we may reasonably expect to find,
that they have suffered in this respect more than others of
less antiquity generally have done.
But beside this common source of errors, there is a cir
cumstance very unfavourable in this respect to these writings
in particular, which makes them pecuUarly liable to mis
takes in transcribing; that is, the great similitude which
some letters bear to others in the Hebrew alphabet : such
¦* as a to 3, 1 to 1, n to n, J to 3 ; i, r, and ], to one another;
more perhaps than are to be found in any other alphabet
whatsoever ; and in so great a degree of likeness, that they
are hardly distinguishable even in some printed copies ; and
not only these letters, but others likewise beside these, are
not easily distinguished from one another in many manu
scripts. This must have been a perpetual cause of frequent
mistakes ; of which, in regard to the two first pairs of letters
above noted, there are many undeniable exaraples; inso-
rauch that a change of one of the similar letters for the
other, when it remarkably clears up the sense, may be fairly

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xlvii
allowed to criticism, even without any other authority than
that of the context to support it.
But to these natural sources of error, as we may call them,
the Jewish copyists have added others, by .sorae absurd prac
tices which they have adopted in transcribing ; — such as
their consulting more the fair appearance of their copy than
the correctness of it ; by wilfully leaving mistakes uncor
rected, lest by erasing they should diminish the beauty and
the value of the transcript ; (for instance, when they had
written a word, or part of a word, wrongly, and immediate
ly saw their mistake, they left the mistake uncorrected, and
wrote the word anew after it) : their scrupulous regard to
the evenness and fulness of their lines ; which induced thera
to cut off from the ends of lines a letter or letters, for which
there was not sufficient room, (for they never divided a
word so that the parts of it should belong to two lines) ;
and to add to the ends of lines letters wholly insignificant,
by way of expletives, to fill up a vacant space : their custom
of writing part of a word at the end of a line, where there
was not room for the whole, and then giving the whole word
at the beginning of the next line. These and some other
like practices manifestly tended to multiply mistakes : they
were so many traps and snares laid in the way of future
transcribers, and must have given occasion to frequent
eiTors, These circumstances considered, it would be the most
astonishing of all miracles, if, notwithstanding the acknow
ledged fallibility of transcribers, and their proneness to
error, from the nature of the subject itself on which they
were employed, the Hebrew writings of the Old Testaraent
had come down to us through their hands absolutely pure,
and free from all mistakes whatsoever.
If it be asked, what then is the real condition of the
present Hebrew text ; and of what sortj and in what num
ber, are the mistakes which we must acknowledge to be
found in it ? it is answered, That the condition of the He
brew text is such as, from the nature of the thing, the an
tiquity of the vwitings themselves, the want of due care, or
critical skill, (in which latter at least the Jews have been
exceedingly deficient), might in all reason have been ex
pected; that the mistakes are frequent, and of various
kinds ; of letters, words, and sentences ; by variation, omis-

xlviii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
sion, transposition; such as often injure the beauty and
elegance, embarrass the construction, alter or obscure the
sense, and sometimes render it quite unintelligible. It it
be objected, that a concession so large as this is, tends to
invalidate the authority of Scripture; that it gives up in
effect the certainty and authenticity of the doctrines con
tained in it, and exposes our religion naked and defenceless
to the assaults of its enemies; this, I think, is a yam and
groundless apprehension. Casual errors may blemish parts,
but do not destroy, or much alter, the whole. If the Iliad
or the ^neid had come down to us with more errors in all
the copies than are to be found in the worst manuscript
now extant of either, without doubt many particidar pas
sages would have lost much of their beauty ; in many the
sense would have been greatly injured; in some rendered
wholly unintelligible ; but the plan of the poem in the whole'
and in its parts, the fable, the mythology, the machinery,
the characters, the great constituent parts, would still have
been visible and apparent, without having suffered any
essential diminution of their greatness. Of all the precious
remains of antiquity, perhaps Aristotle's treatise on Poetry
is come down to us as much injured by time as any : as it
has been greatly mutilated in the whole, some considerable
merabers of it being lost; so the parts remaining have
suffered in proportion, and many passages are rendered very
obscure, probably by the imperfection and frequent mistakes
of the copies now extant. Yet, notwithstanding these dis
advantages, this treatise, so much injured by tirae and so
mutilated, still continues to be the great code of criticism;
the fundaraental principles of which are plainly deducible
from it : we still have recourse to it for the rules and laws
of epic and dramatic poetry, and the imperfection of the
copy does not at all irapeach the authority of the legislator.
Important and fundamental doctrines do not wholly depend
on single passages ; an universal harraony runs through the
Holy Scriptures; the parts mutually support each other,
and supply one another's deficiencies and obscurities. Super
ficial damages and partial defects may greatly diminish the
beauty of the edifice, without injuring its strength, and bring
ing on utter ruin and destruction,*
* " Librariorum discordiam ostendunt varia exemplaria, in quibus idem
locus aliter atque aliter legitur. Sed ea discordia ofTendere nos non debet ;
primum, quia autorum non est, sed librariorum, quorum culpam prajstare

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. xlix
The copies of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament
being then subject, like all other ancient writings, to mis
takes arising from the unskilfiilness or inattention of tran
scribers — a plain matter of fact, which cannot be denied,
and needs not be palliated; it is to be considered, what
remedy can be applied in this case ; how such mistakes can
be corrected upon certain or highly probable grounds?
Now the case being the same, the method which has been
used with good effect in correcting the ancient Greek and
Latin authors, ought in all reason to be applied to the
Hebrew writings. At the revival of literature, critics and
editors, finding the Greek and Latin authors full of mis
takes, set about correcting them, by procuring different
copies, and the best that they could meet with : these they
corapared together, and the mistakes not being the same in
all, one copy corrected another ; and thus they easily got
rid of such errors as had not obtained possession in all the
copies : and generaUy the more copies they had to compare,
the more errors were corrected, and the more perfect the
text was rendered. This, which common sense dictated in
the first place as necessary to be done, in order to the re
moving of difficulties in reading ancient Greek and Latin
autores nee possunt nee debent. Delude, quia plerumque ejusmodi discordia
unius aut alterius verbi est, in quo nihil Iseditur sententia ; aut si quid forte
la^ditur, aliunde corrigi potest; quandoquidem autorum sententise non semper
ex singulis verbis superstitiosius observandis, sed plerumque ex orationis tenore,
aut similium locorum obscrvatione, aut mentis ratiocinatione sunt investigandae.
Ac tales librariorum discordise etiam in profanis autoribus inveniuntur ; ut in
Platone, in Aristotele, in Homero, in Cicerone, in Virgilio, et casteris. Quamvis
enim summo in pretio semper fuerint apud gentiles hi autores, summaque cum
diligentia describi soliti, tamen caveri non potuit, quin multa Scripturee menda
et discrepantias annorum longitudine obrepserint ; nee tamen ea res studiosos
deterret ; nee facit, ut qui libri Ciceronis habentur, ii aut non honi, aut non
Ciceronis esse ducantur : sicut enim detorti aut etiam decussi ramuli agricolam
non offendunt, nee arborem vitiant, quippe quse ramorum infinita multitudine
sic abundet, ut tantulam jacturam alibi sine uUo detrimento resarciat ; ita si
in autore pauculis in locis simile quidpiam usu venit, id nee bonum lectorem
ofTendit, nee autorem vitiat. Manet enim ipsa stirps, et, ut ita loquar, corpus
autoris, ex cujus perpetuo tenore dictorumque ubertate percipi possunt sine
ullo detrimento fructus pleni.
Ad scrupulum eorum, qui metuunt, ne, si hoc concessum fuerit, labascat
sacrarum literarum autoritas, hoc respondeo; non esse scriptorum autoritatem
in paucis quibusdam verbis, quee vitiari detrahive potuerunt, sed in perpetuo
orationis tenore, qui mansit incorruptus, positam. Itaque quemadmodum
Cicero apud sui studiosos nihilo minoris est autoritatis propter paucula qussdam
mutilata aut depravata, quam esset, si id non accidisset ; ita debet et sacrarum
literarum autoritati nihil detrahi, si quid in eis tale, quale ostendimus, contigit."
Scbast. Castellio, quoted by Wetstein, Nov. Test. tom. ii. p. 836.
D

1 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
authors, we have had recourse to in the last place in regard
to the ancient Hebrew writers, Hebrew manuscripts have
at length been consulted and coUated, notwithstanding the
unaccountable opinion which prevailed, that they all exacdy
agreed with one another, and formed precisely one uniform
text. An infinite nuraber of variations have been collected,
frora above six hundred raanuscripts, and some ancient
printed editions, collated or consulted, in most parts of
Europe ; and have been in part published, and the pubU
cation of the whole wUl I hope soon be corapleted, by the
. learned Dr Kennicott, in his edition of the Hebrew Bible
with various readings ; a work the greatest and most impor
tant that has been undertaken and accomplished since die
revival of letters.
But the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, compared
with the text of ancient Greek and Latin authors, has in
one respect gready the disadvantage. There are manu
scripts of the lattery which are much nearer in time to the
age of the authors ; and have suffered much less in propor
tion to the shorter space of time intervening. For example,
the Medicean manuscript of Virgil was written probably
within four or five hundred years after the time of the
poet ; whereas the oldest of the Hebrew manuscripts now
known to be extant, do not come within many centuries of
the times of the several authors; not nearer th^n about
fourteen centuries to the age of Ezra, one of the latest of
them, who is supposed to have revised the books of the
Old Testaraent then extant, and to have reduced them to a
perfect and correct standard : so that we can hardly expect
much more from this vast collection of variations, taken in
themselves as correctors of the text, exclusively of other
consequences, than to be able by their means to discharge
and eliminate the errors that have been gathering and
accumulating in the copies for about a thousand years past ;
and to give us now as good and correct a text as was com
monly current among the Jews, or might easily have been
obtained, so long ago. Indeed, some of the oldest raanu
scripts, from which these variations have been collected, may
possibly be faithful transcripts of select manuscripts at that
time very ancient, and so may really carry us nearer to
the age of Ezra; but this is an advantage which we cannot
be assured of, and upon which we must not presume. But

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. Ii
to get so far nearer to the source, as we plamly do by the
assistance of manuscripts, though of comparatively late date,
is an advantage by no means inconsiderable, or lightly to be
regarded. On the other hand, we have a great advantage in regard
to the Hebrew text, which the Greek and Latin authors
generally want, and which in some degree makes up for the
defect of age in the pufsent Hebrew raanuscripts ; that is,
from the several ancient versions of the Old Testament in
different languages, made in much earlier times, and from
raanuscripts in all probability much more correct and per
fect than any now extant. These versions, for the most
part, being evidently intended for exact literal renderings
of the Hebrew text, may be considered in some respect as
representatives of the manuscripts from which they were
taken : and when the version gives a sense better in itself,
and more agreeable to the context, than the Hebrew text
offers, and at the same time answerable to a word or words
simUar to those of the Hebrew text, and only differing from
it by the change of one or more similar letters, or by the
different position of the same letters, or by some other in
considerable variation; we have good reason to believe,
that the sirailar Hebrew words answering to the version,
were indeed the very reading that stood in the manuscript
from which the translation was made. To add strength to
this way of reasoning, it is to be observed, that the manu
scripts now extant frequently confirm such supposed read
ing of those manuscripts from which the ancient versions
were taken, in opposition to the authority of the present
printed Hebrew text ; and raake the collection of variations,
now preparing for the public, of the highest iraportance ;
as they give a new evidence of the fidelity of the ancient
versions, and set them upon a footing of authority which
they never could obtain before. They were looked upon
as the work of wUd and licentious interpreters, who often
departed from the text, which they undertook to render,
without any good reason, and only followed their own fancy
and caprice. The present Hebrew manuscripts so often
justify the versions in such passages, that we cannot but
conclude, that in many others likewise the difference of the
version from the present original is not to be imputed to
the licentiousness of the translator, but to the carelessness

Jii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
of the Hebrew copyist ; and this affords a just and reasonable
ground for correcting the Hebrew text on the authority of
the ancient versions.
But the assistance of raanuscripts and ancient versions
united wUl be found very insufficient perfectl/ to correct
the Hebrew text. Passages m\\ sometimes occur, in which
neither the one nor the other give any satisfactory sense ;
which has been occasioned probably by very ancient mis
takes of the copy, antecedent to the date of the oldest of
them. On these occasions, translators are put to great dif
ficulties, through which they force their way as well as they
can : they invent new meanings for words and jAirases, and
put us off either with what makes no sense at all, or with a
sense that apparently does not arise out of the words of the
text. The renderings of such desperate places, when they
carry any sense with them, are manifestly conjectural ; and
full as much so, as the conjectures of the critic who hazards
an alteration of the text itself. The fairest way of proceed
ing in these cases seeras to be, to confess the difficulty, and
to lay it before the reader ; and to leave it to his judgment
to decide, whether the conjectural rendering, or the conjiec-
tural eraendation, be more agreeable to the context, to the
exigence of the place, to parallel and similar passages, to
the rules and genius of the language, and to the laws of
sound and temperate criticism.
The condition of the present text of Isaiah in particular
is answerable to the representation above given of the He
brew text in general. It is, I presume, considerably injured,
and stands in need of frequent emendation. Nothing is
more apt to affect, and sometimes utterly to destroy, the
meaning of a sentence, than the omission of a word ; than
which no sort of mistake is more frequent, I reckon, that
in the book of Isaiah, the words oraitted in different places
amount to the number of fifty, I mean whole words, not
including particles, prepositions, and pronouns affixed ; and
I speak of such as I am well persuaded are real omissions ;
much the greater part of which, I flatter myself, the reader
wiU find supplied in the translation and notes, with a good
degree of probabiUty, from manuscripts and ancient ver
sions. Beside these, there are some other places, in which I
suspect some oraission, though there may be no evidence to

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. liii
prove it. If there be any truth in this account of words
omitted, the reader wUl easUy suppose, that mistakes of
other kinds must be frequent in proportion, and amount all
together to a considerable number.
. The manuscripts and ancient versions afford the proper
means of remedying these and other defects of the present
copy. It is manifest, that the ancient interpreters had be
fore thera copies of the Hebrew text different in many places
from that which passes current at present ; and the manu
scripts even now extant frequently vary from that, and frora
one another. Neither is there any one raanuscript or edi
tion whatever, that has the least pretension to a superior
authority, so as to claira to be a standard to which the rest
ought to be reduced, A true text, as far as it is possible to
recover it, is to be gathered from the manuscripts now ex
tant, and from the evidence furnished by the ancient ver
sions of the readings of manuscripts of much earlier times.
This being the case, the first care of the translator should
be, especially in places obscure and difficult, to consider
whether the words which he is to render be indeed the
genuine words of the Prophet, and to ascertain, as far as
may be, the true reading of the text.
The ancient versions above-mentioned as the principal
sources of eraendation, and highly useful in rectifying, as
weU as in explaining, the Hebrew text, are contained in
the London Polyglott,
The Greek version, coramonly caUed the Septuagint, or
of the seventy interpreters, probably made by different hands,
(the number of them uncertain), and at different times, as
the exigence of the , Jewish church at Alexandria and in
other parts of Egypt required, is of the first authority, and
of the greatest use in correcting the Hebrew text ; as being
the most ancient of all ; and as the copy, from which it was
translated, appears to have been free from raany errors,
which afterwards by degrees got into the text. But the
version of Isaiah is not so old as that of the Pentateuch by
a hundred years and raore ; having been made in all pro
bability after the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, when the
reading of the Prophets in the Jewish synagogues began to
be practised ; and even after the building of Onias's teraple,
to favour which there seems to have been some artifice em-

. liv PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
ployed in a certain passage of Isaiah * in this version. And
it unfortunately happens^ that Isaiah has had the hdrd fate
to meet with a translator very unworthy of him, there being
hardly any book of the Old Testament so iU rendered in
that version as this of Isaiah, Add to this, that the version
of Isaiah, as weU as other parts of the Greek version, is
come down to us in a bad condition, incorrect, and with
frequent omissions and interpolations. Yet, with all these
disadvantages, with aU its faults and imperfections, this ver
sion is of more use in correcting the Hebrew text than any
other whatsoever.
The Arabic version is sometimes referred to as verifying
the reading of the LXX, being, for the most part at least,
taken from that version.
The learned Mr Woide, to whom we are indebted for
the publication of a Coptic lexicon and grammar, very use
ful and necessary for the promotion of that part of Utera
ture, has very kindly comraunicated to me his extracts from
the fragments of a manuscript of a Coptic version of Isaiah,
made from the LXX, with which he has collated them,
They are preserved in the Library of St Germain de Prez at
Paris, He judges this Coptic version to be of the second
century. The manuscript was written in the beginning of
the fourteenth century. The same gentleman has had the
goodness, at my request, to collate with Bos's edition of the
LXXj through the book of Isaiah, two manuscripts of the
King's Library, now in the British Museum, the one raark-
ed I. B. II. the other i, D. ii. The former manuscript, con
taining the Prophets of the Version of the LXX, was writ*
ten in the eleventh or twelfth century, according to Grabe ;
(in the tenth or eleventh century, in Mr Woide's opinion) ^
and by a note on the back of the first leaf appears to have
belonged to Pachomius, patriarch of Constantinople in the
beginning of the sixteenth century. Grabe highly valued
this manuscript ; and intended to write a dissertation on the
superiority of this and of the Alexandrian manuscript to that
of the Vatican ; but did not live to execute his design. See
Prolegom. ad torn. Stium, LXX Interp, edit, Grab^ sect,
iii, and v,, and Grabe de Vitiis LXX Interp, p, 118, I
quote this raanuscript by the tide of MS Pachom. for the
reason above given. * Chap. xix. 18. See the note there.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. Iv
The latter manuscript i, D, ii, above-mentioned, contains
many of the historical books, beginning with Ruth; and
ending with Ezra, according to the order of the books in
our English Bible ; and also the prophet Isaiah, of the ver
sion of the LXX, This manuscript in the book of Isaiah
consists of two different parts : the first from the beginning
to the word Taip^wv, chap, xxxv, 5, written in a more ancient
and better character, and upon better vellum; which Mr
Woide judges to be of the eleventh pr twelfth century : the
remaining part he refers to the beginning of the fourteendi
century ; which Grabe supposes to be the age of the whole :
See Grabe de Vitiis LXX Interp. p, 104, This manu
script seems to have been taken from a good copy, as it fre
quently agrees with the best and most ancient manuscripts,
and in particular with the manuscript of Pachomius,
The Coptic fragments above-mentioned,, and these manu
scripts, are useful for the same purpose pf authenticating the
reading of the LXX ; and, in consequence, of ascertaining
or correcting the Hebrew text in some places.
My exaraination of Mr Woide's collation of the two
Greek manuscripts of Isaiah, has been confined to this single
view in respect of the Hebrew text. Were these manuscripts
to be applied more extensively, and to their proper use, that
of correcting the text of the LXX, through all the parts of
it which they contain, I am persuaded they would be found
to be of very great iraportance, and would contribute largely
to the revision and eraendation of that ancient and very
valuable version : a work, which may be now considered as
one of the principal desiderata of sacred criticisra; and
which ought to follow that arduous undertaking, which has
so happily succeeded, the collation of Hebrew manuscripts ;
to which it stands next in order of importance and usefidness
towards our attaining a more perfect knowledge of the Holy
Scriptures, The Chaldee paraphrase of Jonathan Ben Uziel,, made
about or before the time of our Saviour, though it often
wanders from the text in a wordy allegorical explanation,
yet very frequently adheres to it closely, and gives a verbal
rendering of it; and accordingly is soraetimes of great use
in ascertaining the true reading of the Hebrew text.
The Syi-iac version stands next in order of tirae, but is
superior to the Chaldee in usefulness and authority, as well
in ascertaining as in explaining the Hebrew text. It is a

Ivi PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
close translation of the Hebrew into a language of near
affinity to it. It is supposed to have been made as early as
the first century, ' r a -i
The fragraents of the three Greek versions ot Aqmla,
Symraachus, and Theodotion, aU made in the second cen
tury, which are collected in the Hexapla of Montfaucon,
are of considerable use for the same purpose.
The Vulgate, being for the most part the translation of
Jerome, raade in the fourth century, is of service in the same
way, in proportion to its antiquity,
I am greatly obliged to several learned friends for their
observations on particular passages: To one great person
more especially, whom I had the honour to call my friend,
the late exceUent Archbishop Seeker ; whose marginal notes
on the Bible, deposited by his order in the library at Lam
beth, I had permis.sion to consult by the favour of his most
worthy successor. There are two Bibles with his notes :
one a folio English Bible interleaved, containing chiefly cor
rections of the EngUsh translation; the other a Hebrew
Bible of the edition of Michaelis, HaUe, 1720, in 4to,; the
large margins of which are filled vsdth critical remarks on
the Hebrew text, collations of the ancient versions, and
other short annotations ; which stand an illustrious raonu-
nient of the learning, judgraent, and indefatigable industry
of that excellent person : I add also, of his candour and
raodesty ; for there is hardly a proposed emendation, however
ingenious and probable, to which he has not added the objec
tions which occurred to him against it. These valuable
remains of that great and good man will be of infinite service,
whenever that necessary work, a new translation, or a revi
sion of the present translation, of the Holy Scriptures, for
the use of our church, shall be undertaken. To his obser^
vations I have set his name. And to the remarks of others
of my learned friends, I have likewise subjoined in the notes
their names respectively. Among these I must here parti
cularly mention the late learned Dr Durell, Principal of
Hertford College in Oxford ; who some years ago commu
nicated to me his manuscript remarks on the Prophets.
With his leave I took short memorandums of sorae of his
corrections of the text ; and had his permission to make
what use I pleased of them.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. Ivii
I ara in a more particular manner obliged to my learned
friend Dr Kennicott, for his singular favour in frequently
communicating to rae his collations while they were collect
ing, and the printed copy of the book of Isaiah itself, as soon
as it was finished at the press, for my private use, while the
remainder of the volume is in hand and preparing for the
public. These I have examined with sorae attention ; and
I hope the reader, whose expectations do not exceed the
bounds of reason and moderation, will be satisfied with the
assistance and benefit which he will find they have afforded
me. But I must beg to have it well understood, that I do
by no raeans pretend to have exhausted these valuable stores :
many things may have escaped me, which raay strike the eye
of another observer; many a variation, which appears at
first sight very minute and trifling, and manifestly false and
absurd, may by sorae side-light tend to useful discoveries.
To apply these materials to all the uses which can possibly
be made of them, wOl require much labour and considera
tion, much judgment and sagacity, and repeated trials by
a variety of examiners, to whose different views they may
shew themselves in every possible light, Sorae critics may
be very forward and hasty in pronouncing their judgments ;
but it must be left to tirae and experience to estabUsh their
real and fidl value.
In regard to the character and authority of the several
manuscripts which have been collated, and which in the
notes are referred to, we must wait for the information
which Dr Kennicott wiU give us in his general Dissertation,
The knowledge of Hebrew manuscripts is almost a new sub
ject in literature : little progress has been made in it hither
to; and no wonder, when they were esteemed uniformly
consonant one with another, and with the printed text ; con
sequently useless, and not worth the trouble of examining.
Dr Kennicott, and his worthy and very able assistant Mr
Bruns, who have been more conversant with Hebrew manu
scripts, and have had more experience, and more insight,
into the subject, than any, or than all, of the learned of the
present age, will give us the best information concerning
it that can yet be obtained. It must be left to the attentive
observation, and mature experience, of the learned of suc
ceeding times, to perfect a part of knowledge which, Uke
others, must, in its nature, wait the result of diUgent inquiry,
and be carried on by gradual improvements.

Iviii PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION,
In referring to Dr Kennicott's Variations, I have given
the whole number of manuscripts or editions which concur
in any particular reading: what proportion that nuraber
bears to the whole nuraber of coUated copies which contain
the book of Isaiah, may, I hope, soon be seen by comparing
it -with, the catalogue of copies coUated, which wiU be given
at the end of that book. But that the reader in the mean
time, tiU he can have raore full information concerning the
value and authority of the several manuscripts, may at least
have some mark to direct his judgment in estimating the
credit due to the manuscripts quoted, I have, from the kind
comraunication of Dr Kennicott concerning the dates of the
manuscripts, whether certain or probable, given some gene
ral intimation of their value in this respect : for though an
tiquity is no certain mark of the goodness of a manuscript,
yet it is one circumstance that gives it no smaU weight and
authority, especiaUy in this case ; the Hebrew manuscripts
being in general more pure and valuable in proportion to
their antiquity ; those of later date having been more stu
diously rendered conformable to ,the Masoretic standard,*
Among the manuscripts which have been collated, I con
sider those of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, as
ancient, comparatively and in respect of the rest. There
fore in quoting a number of raanuscripts, where the varia
tion is of some importance, I have added, that so many of
that nuraber are ancient, that is, are of the centuries above
mentioned, I have ventured to caU this a New Translation, though
much of our vulgar translation is retained in it. As the
style of that translation is not only exceUent in itself, but
has taken possession of our ear, and of our taste, to have
endeavoured to vary from it, with no other design than that
of giving something new instead of it, would have been to
disgust the reader, and to represent the sense of the Pro
phet in a raore unfavourable manner; besides that it is im
possible for a verbal translator to follow an approved verbal
translation, which has gone before hira, without frequently
treading in the very footsteps of it. The most obvious, the
properest, and perhaps the only terms which the language
affords, are already occupied ; and without going out of his
' See Kennicott, State of the Printed Heb. Text, Dissert, ii. p. 470.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. lix
way to find worse, he cannot avoid thera. Every translator
has taken this liberty with his predecessors : it is no more
than the laws of translation admit, nor indeed than the ne
cessity of the case requires. And as to the turn and modi
fication of the sentences, the translator, in this particular
province of translation, is, I think, as inuch confined to the
author's manner, as to his words : so that too great liberties
taken in varying either the expression or the composition,
in order to give a new air to the whole, will be apt to have
a very bad effect. For these reasons, whenever it shall be
thought proper to set forth the Holy Scriptures for the
public use of our church to better advantage, than as they
appear in the present Enghsh translation, the expediency of
which grows every day more and more evident, a revision
or correction of that translation may perhaps be more ad
visable, than to attempt an entirely new one : For as to the
style and language, it admits but of litde improveraent ;
but, in respect of the sense and the accuracy of interpreta
tion, the improvements of which it is capable are great and
numberless. The translation here offered will perhaps be found to be
in general as close to the text, and as literal, as our English
version. When it departs at all from the Hebrew text on
account of some correction, which I suppose to be requisite,
I give notice to the reader of such correction, and offer ray
reasons for it: if those reasons should sometiraes appear
insufficient, and the translation to be merely conjectural, I
desire the reader to consider the exigence of the case, and
to judge, whether it is not better, in a very obscure and
doubtral passage, to give soraething probable by way of
suppleraent to the author's sense, apparently defective, than
either to leave a blank in the translation, or to give a merely
verbal rendering, which would be altogether unintelligible,
I believe that every translator whatever of any part of the
Old Testament, has taken soraetimes the liberty, or rather
has found hiraself under the necessity, of offering such ren
derings as, if exarained, will be found to be raerely conjec
tural. But I desire to be understood as offering this apo
logy in behalf only of translations designed for the private
use of the reader ; not as extended, without proper limita
tions, to those that are raade for the public service of the
church.

Ix PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
The design of the Notes is to give the reasons and autho
rities on which the translation is founded ; to rectify or to
explain the words of the text ; to illustrate the ideas, the
unages, and the aUusions of the Prophet, by referring to
objects, notions, and custoras, which peculiarly belong to his
age and his country ; and to point out the beauties of par
ticular passages, I sometimes indeed endeavour to open
the design of the prophecy, to shew the connexion between
its parts, and to point out the event which it foretells. But
in general I raust entreat the reader to be satisfied with my
endeavours faithfully to express the literal sense, which is
all that I undertake. If he would go deeper into the mys
tical sense, into theological, historical, and chronological
disquisitions, there are many learned expositors to whom he
may have recourse, who have written full commentaries on
this Prophet ; to which title the present work has no pre
tensions. The sublime and spiritual uses to be made of this
peculiarly evangelical Prophet, must, as I have observed, be
all founded on a faithful representation of the literal sense
which his words contain. This is what I have endeavoured
closely and exactly to express. And within the limits of
this hurable, but necessary province, my endeavours must
be confined. To proceed further, or even to execute this
in the manner I could wish, were it within my abiUties, yet
would hardly be consistent with my present engagements;
which oblige me to offer rather prematurely to the pubhc,
what further time, with more leisure, might perhaps enable
me to render more worthy of their attention,

ISAIAH,

CHAP. 1 The vision of isaiah the son of amots, which
HE SAW concerning JUDAH AND JERUSALEM; IN THE
DAYS OF UZZIAH, JOTHAM, AHAZ, HEZEKIAH, KINGS
OF JUDAH,
2 Hear, O ye heavens ; and give ear, O earth !
For it is Jehovah that speaketh,
I have nourished children, and brought them up ;
And even they have revolted from me,
3 The ox knoweth his possessor ;
And the ass the crib of his lord :
But Israel knoweth not Me ;
Neither doth ray people consider,
4 Ah, sinful nation ! a people laden with iniquity !
A race of evil doers ! children degenerate !
They have forsaken Jehovah ;
They have rejected with disdain the Holy One of
Israel ;
They are estranged froni him ; they have turned their
back upon him,
5 On what part wiU ye smite again, will ye add correc
tion?
The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint :
6 From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no
soundness therein ;
It is wound, and bruise, and putrefying sore :

2 ISAIAH. Chap. L
It hath not been pressed, neither hath it been bound;
Neither hath it been softened with ointment,
7 Your country is desolate, your cities are burnt with fire;
Your land, before your eyes strangers devour it ;
And it is become desolate, as if destroyed by an inun
dation,
8 And the daughter of Sion is left, as a shed in a vineyard ;
As a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a city taken by
siege,
9 Had not Jehovah God of Hosts left us a remnant,
We had soon become as Sodom ; we had been like unto
Gomorrah,
10 Hear ye the word of Jehovah, O ye princes of Sodoiii !
Give ear to the law of our God, ye people of Gomor
rah !
1 1 What have I to do with the multitude of your sacrifices ?
saith Jehovah :
I am cloyed with the burnt-offerings of rams, and the
fat of fed beasts ;
And in the blood of buUocks, and of lambs, and of goats,
I have no delight,
,12 When ye come to appear before me,
Who hath required this at your hands ?
13 Tread my courts no more ; bring no more a vain obla
tion :
Incense ! it is an abomination unto rae.
The new moon, and the sabbath, and the assembly pro
claimed,
I cannot endure ; the fast, and the day of restraint,
14 Your months, and your solemnities, my soul hateth :
They are a burthen upon me ; I am weary of bearmg
them,
15 When ye spread forth your hands, I wiU hide mine eyes
from you ;
Even when ye multiply prayer, I will not hear;
For your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash ye, make ye clean; remove ye far away
The evil of your doings from before mine eyes :
17 Cease to do evU ; learn to do well ;
Seek judgment; amend that which is corrupted;
Do justice to the fatherless ; defend the cause of the
widow.

Chap. L ISAIAH. 3
18 Come on now, and let us plead together, saith Je
hovah :
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white
as snow ;
Though they be red as crimson, they shall be like wool,
19 If ye shaU be willing and obedient.
Ye shall feed on the good of the land ;
20 But if ye refuse, and be rebellious,
Ye shall be food for the sword of the enemy :
For the mouth of Jehovah hath pronounced it,
21 How is the faithful city become a harlot !
She that was full of judgment, righteousness dweUed in
her;
But now murdierers !
22 Thy silver is become dross; thy wine is mixed with
water,
23 Thy princes are rebellious, associates of robbers ;
Every one of them loveth a gift, and seeketh rewards :
To the fatherless they administer not justice ;
And the cause of the widow cometh not before thera,
24 Wherefore saith the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts,
the Mighty One of Israel ;
Aha ! I will be eased of mine adversaries ;
I wUl be avenged of raine enemies,
25 And I will bring again mine hand over thee ;
And I will purge in the furnace thy dross ;
And I will remove all thine alloy,
26 And I will restore thy judges, as at the first ;
And thy counseUors, as at the beginning :
And after this thy name shall be called.
The city of righteousness, the faithful metropolis,
27 Sion shall be redeemed in judgraent,
And her captives in righteousness :
28 But destruction shall fall at once on the revolters and
the sinners ;
And they that forsake Jehovah shall be consumed,
29 For ye shaU be ashamed of the ilexes, which ye have
desired ;
And ye shall blush for the gardens, which ye have
chosen :

isaiah. Chap. L

30 When ye shall be as an ilex, whose leaves are blasted ;
And as a garden, wherein is no water,
31 And the strong shall become tow, and his work a spark
of fire ;
And they shall both burn together, and none shall
quench them.

CHAP. 1 The word, which was revealed to isaiah, the
^^' SON OF amots, concerning JUDAH AND JERUSALEM.
2 It shall come to pass in the latter days ;
The mountain of the house of Jehovah shall be esta
blished on the top of the mountains ;
And it shall be exalted above the hUls :
And aU nations shall flow unto it,
3 And raany peoples shaU go, and shaU say,
Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jeho
vah;
To the house of the God of Jacob ;
And he will teach us of his ways ;
And we will walk in his paths :
For from Sion shall go forth the law ;
4 And the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem,
And he shall judge among the nations ;
And shaU work conviction in many peoples :
And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,- *
And their spears into pruning-hooks :
Nation shaU not lift up sword against nation ;
Neither shall they learn war any more.
5 O house of Jacob, come ye,
And let us walk in the light of Jehovah !
6 Verily thou hast abandoned thy people, the house of
Jacob :
Because they are filled with diviners from the east ;
And with soothsayers like the Philistines ;
And they multiply a spurious brood of strange chUdren.
7 And his land is filled with silver and gold ;
And there is no end to his treasures :
And his land is fiUed with horses ;
Neither is there any end to his chariots.

Chap. IL ISAIAH. * 5
8 And his land is filled with idols;
He boweth himself down to the work of his hands ;
To that which his fingers have made :
9 Therefore shall the mean man be bowed down, and
the mighty man shall be humbled ;
And thou wilt not forgive them,
10 Go into the rock, and hide thyself in the dust ;
From the fear of Jehovah, and from the glory of his
majesty,
When he ariseth to strike the earth with terror,
1 1 The lofty eyes of raen shall be hurabled ;
The highth of mortals shaU bow down :
And Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day,
12 For the day of Jehovah God of Hosts is against every
thing great and lofty ;
And against every thing that is exalted, and it shall be
humbled,
13 Even against all the cedars of Lebanon, the high and the
exalted ;
And against all the oaks of Basan : .
14 And against all the mountains, the high ones ;
And against all the lulls, the exalted ones ;
15 And against every tower, high-raised;
And against every mound, strongly fortified,
16 And against all the ships of Tarshish ;
And against every lovely work of art,
17 And the pride of man shall bow down;
And the highth of mortals shall be hurabled ;
And Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day :
18 And the idols shall totally disappear,
19 And they shall go into caverns of rocks, and into holes
of the dust ;
Frora the fear of Jehovah, and from the glory of his
majesty,
¦ When he ariseth to strike the earth vnth terror,
20 In that day shall a man cast away his idols of sUver,
And his idols of gold, which they have made to worship ;
To the moles, and to the bats :
21 To go into caves of the rocks, and into clefts of the
craggy rocks ;

6 ISAIAH. Chap. IL
From the fear of Jehovah, and from the glory of his
majesty,
When he ariseth to strike the earth with terror,
22 Trust ye no more in man, whose breath is in his nos
trils ;
For of what account is he to be made ?
CHAP. 1 For behold the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts
^^^- Removeth from Jerusalem, and from Judah,
Every stay and support;
The whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water ;
2 The raighty raan, and the warrior;
The judge, and the prophet, and the diviner, and the

3 The ruler of fifty, and the honourable person ;
And the counsellor, and the skUful artist, and the power
ful in persuasion.
4 And I will raake boys their princes ;
And infants shall rule over them,
5 And the people shall be oppressed, one man by another :
And every man shall behave insolently towards his
neighbour ;
The boy towards the old man, and the base towards the
honourable,
6 Therefore shaU a man take his brother, of his father's
house, by the garraent;
Saying, Come, and be thou ruler over us ;
And let thine hand support our ruinous state,
7 Then shall he openly declare, saying,
I will not be the healer of your breaches ;
For in my house is neither bread, nor raiment :
Appoint not me ruler of the people.
8 For Jerusalem tottereth, and Judah falleth ;
Because their tongues, and their hands, are against Je
hovah ;
To provoke by their disobedience the cloud of his glory,
9 The stedfastness of their countenance witnesseth against
thera;
For their sin, like Sodora, they pubUsh, they hide it
not:
Wo to their souls! for upon themselves have they
brought down evil.

Chap, IIL • ISAIAH. 7
10 Pronounce ye a blessing on the just : verily good fshall
be to him] ;
For the fruit of his deeds shall he eat,
1 1 Wo to the wicked : evil [shall be his portion] ;
For the work of his hands shaU be repaid unto him,
12 As for my people, chUdren are their oppressors ;
And women bear rule over them,
O my people, thy leaders cause thee to err ;
And pervert the way of thy paths,
13 Jehovah ariseth to plead his cause ;
He standeth up to contend with his people,
14 Jehovah will meet in judgment.
The elders of his people, and their princes :
As for you, ye have consumed ray vineyard ;
The plunder of the poor is in your houses,
15 What mean ye, that ye crush my people ;
And grind the faces of the poor ?
Saith Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts,
16 Moreover Jehovah hath said :
Because the daughters of Sion are haughty ;
And walk displaying the neck,
And falsely setting off their eyes with paint ;
Mincing their steps as they go,
And with their feet lightly tripping along :
17 Therefore will the Lord humble the head of the daugh
ters of Sion ;
And Jehovah wUl expose their nakedness,
18 In that day will the Lord take from them the ornaments
Of the feet-rings, and the net-works, and the crescents ;
19 The pendents, and the bracelets, and the thin veUs;
20 The tires, and the fetters, and the zones.
And the perfume-boxes, and the amulets ;
21 The rings, and the jewels of the nostril;
22 The embroidered robes, and the tunics ;
And the cloaks, and the little purses ;
23 The transparent garments, and the fine linen vests;
And the turbans, and the mantles :
24 And there shall be, instead of perfume, a putrid ulcer ;
And, instead of well-girt raiment, rags ;
And, instead of high-dressed hair, baldness ; |^

ISAIAH.

Chap. IIL

IV.

And, instead of a zone, a girdle of sackclodi :
A sun-burnt skin, instead of beauty,
25 Thy people shaU fall by the sword ;
And thy raighty men in the battle,
26 And her doors shall lament and mourn ;
And desolate shall she sit on the ground,
CHAP. 1 And seven women shall lay hold on one man in that
day, saying :
Our own bread will we eat,
And with our own garments will we be clothed ;
Only let us be called by thy name ;
Take away our reproach,
2 In that day shall the branch of Jehovah
Become glorious and honourable ;
And the produce of the land excellent and beautiful,
For the escaped of the house of Israel,
3 And it shall come to pass, whosoever is left in Sion,
And reraaineth in Jerusalem,
Holy shall he be called ;
Every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem.
4 When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the
daughters of Sion ;
And the blood of Jerusalem shall have removed froin
the midst of her.
By a spirit of judgment, and by a spirit of burning :
5 Then shall Jehovah create upon the station of Mount
Sion,
And upon all her holy assemblies,
A cloud by day, and smoke ;
And the brightness of a flaming fire by night :
Yea, over all shall the Glory be a covering,
6 And a tabernacle it shaU be, for shade by day from the
heat;
And for a covert, and a refuge, from storm and rain.

CHAP. I Let me sing now a song to my Beloved ;
V. A song of loves concerning his vineyard.
My Beloved had a vineyard,
¦. On a^ high and fruitful hUl :
2 And Jie fenced it round, and he cleared it from the
stones,

Chap. V. ISAIAH. 9
And he planted it with the vine of Sorek ;
And he buUt a tower in the midst of it.
And he hewed out also a lake therein :
And he expected, that it should bring forth grapes,
But it brought forth poisonous berries,
3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and ye men of
Judah,
Judge, I pray you, between me and ray vineyard :
4 What could have been done raore to my vineyard,
Than I have done unto it ?
Why, when I expected that it should bring forth grapes,
Brought it forth poisonous berries ?
5 But come now, and I will raake known unto you,
What I purpose to do to my vineyard :
To remove its hedge, and it shaU be devoured ;
To destroy its fence, and it shall be trodden down,
6 And I wiU make it a desolation :
It shall not be pruned, neither shall it be digged ;
But the brier and the thorn shall spring up in it ;
And I will command the clouds,
That -they shed no rain upon it,
7 Verily, the vineyard of Jehovah God of Hosts is the
house of Israel ;
And the men of Judah the plant of his delight :
And he looked for judgment, but behold tyranny;
And for righteousness, but behold the cry of the op
pressed,
8 Wo unto you, who join house to house ;
Who lay field unto field together ;
Until there be no place, and ye have your dwelling
Alone to yourselves, in the midst of the land,
9 To mine ear hath Jehovah God of Hosts revealed it :
Surely many houses shall become a desolation ;
The great and the fair ones, without an inhabitant,
10 Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield a single bath of
wine,
And a chomer of seed shall produce an ephah,
1 1 Wo unto thera, who rise early in the morning, to fol
low strong drink ;
Who sit late in the evening, that wine may inflame
them :

10 ISAIAH, Chap. V.
12 And the lyre, and the harp, the tabor, and the pipe,
And wine, are their entertainments :
But the work of Jehovah they regard not;
And the operation of his hands they do not perceive,
13 Therefore my people goeth into captivity for want of
knowledge ;
And their nobles have died with hunger ;
And their plebeians are parched up with thirst,
14 Therefore Hades hath enlarged his appetite ;
And hath stretched open his mouth without measure :
And down go her nobUity, and her populace ;
And her busy throng, and all that exult in her.
15 And the mean man shall be bowed down, and the great
man shall be brought low ;
And the eyes of tlie haughty shall be humbled :
16 And Jehovah God of Hosts shall be exalted in judg
ment;
And God the Holy One shall be sanctified by display
ing his righteousness.
17 Then shall the sheep feed without restraint ;
And the kids shaU depasture the desolate fields of the
luxurious.
18 Wo unto them, who draw out iniquity, as a long cable;
And sin, as the thick traces of a wain :
19 Who say, let him make speed then, let him hasten
His work, that we may see it ;
And let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel
Draw near, and come to pass, that we may know it
20 Wo unto them who call evil good, and good evil ;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness ;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
21 Wo unto them, who are wise in their own eyes.
And prudent in their own conceit.
22 Wo unto them, who are powerful to drink wine ;
And men of might to mingle strong drink :
23 Who justify the guUty for reward.
And take away the righteousness of the righteous from
him.
24 Therefore, as the tongue of fire licketh up the stubble,
And as the flame dissolveth the chaff;
So shall their root become Uke touchwood,
And their blossom shall go up Uke the dust :

Chap. V. ISAIAH. 11
Because they have despised the law of Jehovah God of
Hosts ;
And scornfully rejected the word of the Holy One of
Israel.
25 Wherefore the anger of Jehovah is kindled against
his people;
And he hath stretched out his hand against them :
And he smote thera ; and the mountains trembled ;
And their carcasses became as the dung in the midst
of the streets.
For all this his anger is not turned away ;
But StiU is his hand stretched out,
26 And he will erect a standard for the nations afar off;
And he wiU hist every one of them from the ends of the
earth ;
And behold, with speed swiftly shall they come.
27 None among them is faint, and none stumbleth;
None shall slumber, nor sleep :
Nor shall the girdle of their loins be loosed ;
Nor shaU the latchet of their shoes be unbound.
28 Whose arrows are sharpened;
And all their bows are bent :
The hoofs of their horses shall be counted as adamant ;
And their wheels as a whirlvvind.
29 Their growling is like the growling of the Uoness ;
Like the young lions shall they growl :
They shall roar, and shaU seize the prey ;
And they shall bear it away, and none shall rescue it.
30 In that day, shall they roar against them, Uke the roar
ing of the sea ;
And these shaU look to the heaven upward, and down
to the earth;
And lo ! darkness, distress !
And the light is obscured by the gloomy vapour.

CHAP. 1 In the year in which Uzziah the king died, I saw
VI- Jehovah sitting on a throne high and lofty ; and the
2 train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood
seraphim : each one of them had six wings : with two
of them he covereth his face, with two of them he cover-
3 eth his feet, and two of them he useth in flying. And
they cried alternately, and said :

12 ISAIAH. Chap. VL
Holy, holy, holy, Jehovah God of Hosts !
The whole earth is fiUed with his glory.
4 And the pUlars of the vestibule were shaken with the
voice of their cry ; and the temple was filled with smoke.
,5 And I said, Alas for rae ! I am struck dumb : for I am
a man of polluted lips ; and in the midst of a people of
polluted lips do I dwell : for mine eyes have seen the
6 King, Jehovah God of Hosts. And one of the seraphim
came flying unto me; and in his hand was a burning
coal, which he had taken with the tongs from off the
7 altar. And he touched my mouth, and said : —
Lo ! this hath touched thy lips :
Thine iniquity is removed, and thy sin is expiated,
8 And I heard the voice of Jehovah, saying : Whom shall
I send ; and who wUl go for us ? And I said : Behold,
9 here am I ; send me. And he said : —
Go, and say thou to this people :
Hear ye indeed, but understand not ;
See ye indeed, but perceive not :
10 Make gross the heart of this people;
Make their ears dull, and close up their eyes ;
Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,
And understand with their hearts, and be converted ;
and I should heal thera,
11 And I said : How long, O Jehovah ? And he said:—
Until cities be laid waste, so that there be no inhabi
tant;
And houses, so that there be no man :
And the land be left utterly desolate,
12 Until Jehovah remove man far away ;
And there be many a deserted woman in the midst of
the land,
13 And though there be a tenth part remaining in it,
Even this shall undergo a repeated destruction ;
Yet, as the ilex, and the oak, though cut down, hath
its stock remaining,
A holy seed shall be the stock of the nation.

vn T ^'^® ^^^^ °^ ¦^^^^' ^^^^ ^^'^ °f Jotham, the son of
Uzziah king of Judah, Retsin king of Syria, and Pekah,
the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, carae up against
Jerusalem, to besiege it; but they could not overcome

Chap. VIL ISAIAH. 13
2 it. And when it was told to the house of David, that
Syria was supported by Ephraim; the heart of the king,
and the heart of his people, was moved ; as the trees of
the forest are moved before the wind,
3 And Jehovah said to Isaiah : Go out now to meet
Ahaz ; thou and Shearjashub thy son ; at thejend of the
aqueduct of the upper pool, at the causeway of the ful-
4 ler's field. And thou shalt say unto him : —
Take heed, and be stUl ; fear not, neither let thy heart
be faint,
Because of the two tails of these smoking firebrands ;
For the fierce wrath of Retsin, and of the son of Re
maliah,
5 Because Syria hath devised evil against thee ;
Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, saying :
6 Let us go up against Judah, and harass it ;
And let us rend off a part of it for ourselves ;
And let us set a king to reign in the midst of it ;
Even the son of Tabeal,
7 Thus saith the Lord Jehovah :
It shall not stand, neither shall it be,
8 Though the head of Syria be Damascus,
And the head of Damascus, Retsin ;
Yet within threescore and five years
Ephraim shall be broken, that he be no more a
people :
9 Though the head of Ephraim be Samaria ;
And the head of Saraaria, Remaliah's son.
If ye beUeve not in rae, ye shall not be established,
10 And Jehovah spake yet again to Ahaz, saying :
1 1 Ask thee a sign from Jehovah thy God :
Go deep to the grave, or high to the heaven above.
12 And Ahaz said : I will not ask ; neither will I tempt
13 Jehovah. And he said :
Hear ye now, O house of David :
Is it a sraall thing for you to weary raen.
That you should weary ray God also ?
14 Therefore Jehovah himself shall give you a sign :
Behold, the Virgin conceiveth, and beareth a son ;
And she shall call his name, Immanuel.
15 Butter and honey shall he eat,
When he shall know to refuse what is evil, and to
choose whfit is good :

14, ISAIAH. Chap. VIL
16 For before this child shaU know
To refuse the evil, and to choose the good ;
The land shall become desolate.
By whose two kings thou art distressed,
17 But Jehovah shaU bring upon thee.
And upon thy people, and upon thy father's house,
Days, such as have not come,
From the day that Ephraim departed from Judah,
18 And it shall come to pass in that day ;
Jehovah shall hist the fly,
That is in the utmost part of the rivers of Egypt ;
And the bee, that is in the land of Assyria :
19 And they shaU come, and they shall light aU of them
On the desolate vallies, and on the craggy rocks.
And on all the thickets, and on all the caverns,
20 In that day, Jehovah shaU shave by the hired razor,
By the people beyond the river, by the king of
Assyria,
The head and the hair of the feet ;
And even the beard itself shall be destroyed,
21 And it shall come to pass in that day,
That if a man shall feed a young cow, and two sheep;
22 From the plenty of milk, which they shall produce,
he shall eat butter :
Even butter and honey shall he eat.
Whosoever is left in the midst of the land.
23 And every vineyard, that hath a thousand vines.
Valued at a thousand pieces of silver,
Shall become in that day briers and thorns.
24 With arrows and with the bow shall they come thither ;
For the whole land shaU become briers and thorns.
25 And all the hills, which were dressed with the mattock,
Where the fear of briers and thorns never came,
Shall be for the range of the ox, and for the treading
of sheep.

CHAP. 1 And Jehovah said unto me : Take unto thee a large
VIIL mirror, and write on it with a workman's graving tool,
2 To hasten the spoU, to take quickly the prey. And
I called unto me for a testiraony faithful witnesses;
Uriah the priest, and Zachariah the son of Jeberechiah,

Chap. VIIL ISAIAH.
3 And I approached unto the prophetess; and she coit^
ceived, and bare a son. And .Tehovah said unto me :
Call his name Maher-shalal hash-baz ;
4 For before the child shall know
To pronounce, My father and My raother.
The riches of Daraascus shall be borne away,
And the spoU of Samaria, before the king of Assyria.
5 Yet again Jehovah spake unto rae, saying :
6 Because this people' hath rejected
The waters of Siloah, which flow gently ;
And rejoiceth in Retsin, and the son of Reraaliah :
7 Therefore behold the Lord bringeth up upon them
The waters of the river, the strong and the mighty ;
Even the king of Assyria, and all his force.
And he shall rise above aU their channels.
And shall go over all their banks,
8 And he shall pass through Judah, overflowing and
spreading,
Even to tlie neck shall he reach :
And the extension of his wings shall be
Over the full breadth of thy land, O Immanuel !
9 Know ye this, O ye peoples, and be struck with
consternation ;
And give ear to it, all ye of distant lands :
Gird yourselves, and be disraayed; gird yourselves,
and be disraayed.
10 Take counsel together, and it shall corae to nought;
Speak the word, and it shall not stand :
For God is with us.
1 1 For thus said Jehovah unto me ;
As taking me by the hand he instructed rae,
That I should not walk in the way of this people,
saying :
12 Say ye not. It is holy.
Of every thing of which this people shall say, It is holy :
And fear ye not the object of their fear, neither be ye
terrified.
13 Jehovah God of Hosts, sanctify ye him;
And let hira be your fear, and let him be your dread :
14 And he shall be unto you a sanctuary;
But a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence,
To the two houses of Israel ;

16 ISAIAH. Chap. VIII.
A trap, and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
15 And many among them shaU stumble,
And shaU fall, and be broken ; and shaU be ensnared,
and caught,
16 Bind up the testimony, seal the command, among my
disciples,
17 I will therefore wait for Jehovah, who hideth his
face
From 'the house of Jacob ; yet wiU I look for him,
18 Behold, I, and the children,
Whom Jehovah hath given unto me ;
For signs and for wonders in Israel,
From Jehovah God of Hosts,
Who dwelleth in the mountain of Sion,
19 And when they shaU say unto you :
Seek unto the necromancers and the wizards ;
To them that speak inwardly, and that mutter :
Should not a people seek unto their God ?
Should they seek, instead of the living, unto the dead ?
20 Unto the command, and unto the testimony, let them
seek:
If they will not speak according to' this word,
In which there is no obscurity;
21 Every one of them shall pass through the land distressed
and famished :
And when he shall be famished, and angry with himself,
He shall curse his king and his God,
22 And he shall cast his eyes upwards, and look down to
the earth :
And lo ! distress and darknessJ
Gloom, tribulation, and accumulated darkness !
23 But there shall not hereafter be darkness in the land
which was distressed :
In the former time he debased
The land of Zebulon, and the land of Naphthali ;
But in the latter time he hath made it glorious :
Even the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the
nations,
CHAP. 1 The people, that walked in darkness,
I^' Have seen a great light ;
They that dweUed in the land of the shadow of death,
Unto them hath the light shined.

Chap. IX. ISAIAH. 17
2 Thou hast multiplied the nation, thou hast increased
their joy :
They rejoice before thee, as with the joy of harvest ;
As they rejoice, who divide the spoil,
3 For the yoke of his burthen, the staff laid on his shoul
der.
The rod of his oppressor, hast thou Broken, as in the day
of Midian,
4 For the greaves of the armed warrior in the conflict,
And the garment rolled in mjich blood,
ShaU be for a burning, even fuel for the fire,
5 For unto us a Child is born ; unto us a Son is given ;
And the government shall be upon his shoulder :
And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
The mighty God, the Father of the everlasting age, the
Prince of peace,
6 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall
be no end ; '
Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom ;
To fix it, and to establish it
With judgraent and with justice, henceforth and for
ever:
The zeal of Jehovah God of Hosts will do this.

7 Jehovah hath sent a word against Jacob ;
And it hath lighted upon Israel,
8 Because the people all of them carry themselves
haughtily ;
Ephraim, and the inhabitant of Samaria ;
In pride and arrogance of heart, saying :
9 The bricks are fallen, but we will build vvith hewn stone ;
The sycamores are cut down, but we wUl replace thera
with cedars :
10 Therefore will Jehovah excite the princes of Retsin
against him ;
And raise up his enemies together :
1 ] The Syrians from the east, and the Philistines from the
west;
And .they shall devour Israel on every side.
For aU this his anger is not turned away ;
But his hand is still stretched out.

18 ISAIAH. Chap. IX.
12 Yet this people have not turned unto him that smote
them;
And Jehovah God of Hosts they have not sought.
13 Therefore shall Jehovah cut off from Israel the head
and the tail ;
The branch and the rush, in one day :
14 The aged, and the honourable person, he is the head ;
And the prophet that teacheth falsehood, he is the tail.
15 For the leaders of this people lead them astray;
And they that are led by them shall be devoured.
16 Wherefore Jehovah shall not rejoice over their young
men;
And on their orphans, and their widows, he shall have
no compassion.
For every one of them is a hypocrite and an evil-doer ;
And every raouth speaketh folly.
For all this his anger is not turned away ;
But his hand is still stretched out.
17 For wickedness burneth like a fire ;
The brier and the bramble it shall consume :
And it shall kindle the thicket of the wood ;
And they shall mount up in volumes of rising smoke.
18 Through the wrath of Jehovah God of Hosts is the land
darkened ;
And the people shaU be as fiiel for the fire :
A man shall not spare his brother.
19 But he shall snatch on the right, and yet be hungry;
And he shall devour on the left, and not be satisfied:
Every man .shall devour the flesh of his neighbour,
20 Manasseh shall devour Ephraim, and Ephraim Manas-
seh;
And both of them shall be united against Judah,
For all this his anger is not turned away ;
But his hand is still stretched out,
CHAP. 1 Wo unto them, that decree unrighteous decrees ;
X. Unto the scribes, that prescribe oppression :
2 To turn aside the needy from judgment;
To rob of their right the poor of my people :
That the widows may become their prey ;
And that they may plunder the orphans.

Chap, X. ISAIAH. 19
3 And what wUl ye do in the day of visitation ?
And in the desolation, which shall come from afar ?
To whom wiU ye flee for succour ?
And where will ye deposit your wealth ?
4 Without me, they shall bow down under the bounden,
And under the slain shall they fall.
For all this his anger is not turned away ;
But his hand is still stretched out.

5 Ho ! to the Assyrian, the rod of mine anger,
The staff in whose hand is the instrument of mine indig
nation !
6 Against a dissembling nation will I send him ;
And against a people the object of my wrath wUl I give
him a charge :
To gather the spoil, and to bear away the prey ;
And to trample them under foot like the mire of the
streets.
7 But he doth not so purpose ;
And his heart doth not so intend :
But to destroy is in his heart ;
And to cut off nations not a few.
8 For he saith. Are not my princes altogether kings ?
9 Is not Calno as Carchemish ?
Is not Hamath as Arphad ?
Is not Samaria as Damascus ?
10 As ray hand hath seized the kingdoms of the idols.
Whose graven images were superior to those of Saraaria
and Jerusalem;
1 1 As I have done unto Samaria and her idols,
ShaU I not likewise do unto Jerusalem, and her images ?
12 But it shaU be, when Jehovah hath accomplished
his whole work
Upon Mount Sion, and upon Jerusalem ;
I wUl punish the effect of the proud heart of the king of
Assyria ;
And the triumphant look of his haughty eyes,
13 For he hath said, By the strength of my hand have I
done it;
And by my wisdom ; for I am endowed with prudence,
I have removed the bounds of the peoples ;

20 ISAIAH. Chap. X,
And I have plundered their hoarded treasures ;
And I have brought down those, that were strongly
seated,
14 And my hand hath found, as a nest, the riches of the
peoples ;
And as one gathereth eggs deserted,
So have I made a general gathering of the earth:
And there was no one, that moved the wing ;
That opened the beak, or that chirped,
15 Shall the axe boast itself against him, that heweth
therewith ?
Shall the saw raagnify itself against him, that moveth it ?
As if the rod should wield him, that lifteth it ;
As if the staff should lift up its master,
16 Wherefore Jehovah the Lord of Hosts shall send
Upon his fat ones leanness ;
And under his glory .shaU he kindle
A burning as of a conflagration,
17 And the light of Israel shall become a fire,
And his Holy One a flame ;
And he shall burn, and consume his thorn
And his brier in one day,
18 Even the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field,
From the soul even to the flesh, shall he consume ;
And it shall be, as when one fleeth out of the fire,
19 And the remainder of the trees of his. forest shall be a
small number.
So that a child may write thera down,
20 And it shall come to pass in that day,
No more shall the remnant of Israel,
And the escaped of the house of Jacob;
Lean upon him, that smote them :
But shall lean upon Jehovah,
The Holy One of Israel, in truth,
21 A remnant shall return, a remnant of Jacob,
Unto God the Mighty,
22 For though thy people, O Israel, shall be as the sand of
the sea,
A remnant of them only shall return.
The consummation decided, overfloweth with strict jus
tice:

Chap. X. ISAIAH. 21
23 For a full and decisive decree
Shall Jehovah the Lord of Hosts accomplish in the
midst of the land,
24 Wherefore thus saith Jehovah the Lord of Hosts :
Fear not, O my people, that dwellest in Sion, because of
the Assyrian :
With his staff indeed shall he smite thee,
And his rod shall he lift up against thee, in the way of
Egypt,
25 But yet a very little tirae, and raine uidignation shall
cease;
And mine anger in their destruction :
26 And Jehovah God of Hosts shaU raise up against him
a scourge,
Like the stroke upon Midian at the rock of Oreb,
And like the rod which he lifted -up over the sea ;
Yea he will lift it up, after the manner of Egypt,
27 And it shall come to pass in that day,
His burthen shaU be removed fi-om off thy shoulder,
And his yoke from off thy neck :
Yea the yoke shall perish from off your shoulders.
28 He is come to Aiath ; he hath passed to Migron ;
At Michmas he will deposit his baggage,
29 They have passed the strait ; Geba is their lodging for
the night :
Ramah is frightened ; Gibeah of Saul fleeth,
30 Cry aloud with thy voice, O daughter of Gallira ;
Hearken unto her, O Laish ; answer her, Q Anathoth,
31 Madmena is gone away; the inhabitants of Gebira flee
araain,
32 Yet this day shall he abide in Nob :
He shall shake his hand against the raount of the daugh
ter of Sion ;
Against the hiU of Jerusalem, ,
33 Behold Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts, rm.! 1^ ^' ''
Shall lop the flourishing branch with a dreadfid crash ;
And the high of stature shall be cut down,
And the lofty shaU be brought low :
34 And he shall hew the thickets of the forest with iron,
And Lebanon shall fall by a mighty haiid/
F

22

ISAIAH, Chap. XI.

CHAP.

But there shaU spring forth a rod from the trunk of
XL Jesse;
And a scion from his roots shall become frmttuL
2 And the spirit of Jehovah shaU rest upon him ;
The spirit of wisdom, and understanding ;
The spirit of counsel, and strength;
The spirit of the knowledge, and the fear of Jehovah,
3 And he shaU be of quick discernraent.in the fear of Je
hovah :
So that not according to the sight of his eyes shaU he
judge ;
Nor according to the hearing of his ears shall he re
prove,
4 But with righteousness shall he judge the poor,
And with equity shall he work conviction in the raeek
of the earth.
And he shaU smite the earth vdth the blast of his mouth,
And with the breath of his Ups he shaU slay the wicked
one,
5 And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins ;
And faithfulness the cincture of his reins,
6 Then shall the wolf take up his abode with the lamb ;
And the leopard shaU lie down with the kid :
And the calf, and the young lion, and the falling shall
come together;
And a litde child shall lead them,
7 And the heifer and the she-bear shall feed together ;
Together shall their young ones lie down ;
And the lion shaU eat straw like the ox,
8 And the suckling shall play upon the hole of the aspic ;
And upon the den of the basUisk shall the new-weaned
chUd lay his hand,
9 They shall not hurt, nor destroy, in all my holy moun
tain;
For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah,
' As the waters that cover the depths of the sea,
10 And it shall come to pass in that day,
The root of Jesse, which standeth for an ensign to the
peoples,
Unto him shall the nations repair,
And his resting-place shall be glorious.

Chap, XL ISAIAH. 23
1 1 And it shall come to pass in that day,
Jehovah shaU again the second time put forth his hand,
To recover the remnant of his people
That reraaineth, from Assyria, and from Egypt;
And from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam ;
And from Shinear, and from Hamath, and from the
western regions,
12 And he shall lift up a signal to the nations;
And he shall gather the outcasts of Israel,
And the dispersed of Judah shall he coUect,
From the four extremities of the earth,
13 And the jealousy of Ephraim shall cease ;
And the enmity of Judah shall be no more :
Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah;
And Judah shall not be at enmity vnth Ephraim,
14 But they shall invade the borders of the Philistines
westward ;
Together shall they spoil the children of the east :
On Edora and Moab they shaU lay their hand ;
And the sons of Amraon shall obey them,
15 And Jehovah shall smite with a drought the tongue
of the Egyptian sea ;
And he shall shake his hand over the river with his
vehement wind ;
And he shall strike it into seven streams,
And make thera pass over it dry-shod,
16 And there shall be a high- way for the remnant of his
people,
Which shall remain from Assyria :
As it was unto Israel,
In the day when he came up from the land of Egypt.
CHAP. 1 And in that day thou shalt say :
^11- I will give thanks unto thee, O Jehovah ; for though
thou hast been angry with me,
Thine anger is turned away, and thou hast comforted rae,
2 Behold, God is my salvation;
I wdl trust, and will not be afraid :
For my strength, and my song, is Jehovah ;
And he is become unto me salvation,
3 And when ye shaU draw waters with joy from the foun-
4 tains of salvation ; in that day ye shall say :
Give ye thanks to Jehovah ; call upon his name ;

24 ISAIAH. Chap. XIL
Make known among the peoples his mighty deeds :
Record ye, how highly his name is exalted,
5 Sing ye Jehovah ; for he hath vn-ought a stupendous
work:
This is made manifest in all the earth,
6 Cry aloud, and shout for joy, O inhabitress of Sion ;
For great in the midst of thee is the Holy One of
Israel.

CHAP. 1 The oracle concerning babylon, which was
^lll- revealed to isaiah, the son of amots.
2 Upon a lofty mountain erect the standard:
Exalt the voice ; beckon with the hand ;
That they may enter the gates of princes.
3 I have given a charge to mine enrolled warriors ;
I have even called my strong ones to execute my wrath ;
Those that exult in my greatness.
4 A sound of a multitude in the mountains, as of a great
people ;
A sound of the tumult of kingdoras, of nations gathered
together !
Jehovah, God of Hosts, mustereth the host for the
battle.
5 They come from a distant land, from the end of the
heavens ;
Jehovah, and the instruments of his wrath, to destroy
the whole land.
6 Howl ye, for the day of Jehovah is at hand :
As a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.
7 Therefore shall all hands be slackened ;
And every heart of mortal shaU melt; and they shall be
terrified :
8 Torments and pangs shall seize them ;
As a woman in travail, they shall be pained :
They shall look one upon another with astonishment ;
Their countenances shall be like flames of fire.
9 Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh, inexorable;
Even indignation, and burning wrath :
To make the land a desolation ;
And her sinners he shall destroy from out of her.

Chap. XIIL ISAIAH. 25
10 Yea the stars of heaven, and the constellations thereof,
Shall not send forth dieir light :
The sun is darkened at his going forth.
And the moon shaU not cause her Ught to shine.
11 And I wiU visit the world for its evil, | — - ' ¦
And the wicked for their iniquity :
And I wiU put an 'end'to the arrogance of the proud ;
And I wUl bring dovra the haughtiness of the terrible,
12 I will make a mortal more precious than fine gold;
Yea a man, than the rich ore of Ophir,
13 Wherefore I wiU make the heavens tremble;
And the earth shall be shaken out of her place :
•In the indignation of Jehovah God of Hosts ;
And in the day of his burning anger,
14 And the remnant shall be, as a roe chased ;
And as sheep, when there is none to gather them to
gether ;
They shall look, every one towards his own people ;
And they shall flee every one to his own land,
15 Every one, that is overtaken, shall be thrust through;
And all that are collected in a body shaU fall by the
sword,
16 And their infants shall be dashed before their eyes;
Their houses shall be plundered, and their wives ravished,
17 Behold, I raise up against them the Modes; •
Who shaU hold silver of no account ;
And as for gold, they shall not delight in it,
18 Their bows shaU dash the young men;
And on the fruit of the womb they shaU have no mercy :
Their eye shaU have no pity even on the children,
19 And Babylon shaU become, she that was the beauty of
kingdoms,
The glory of the pride of the Chaldeans,
As the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah by the hand
of God.
20 It shaU not be inhabited for ever ;
Nor shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation :
Neither shaU the Arabian pitch his tent there ;
Neither shall the shepherds make their folds there,
21 But there shall the wild beasts of the deserts lodge;
And howling monsters shall fill their houses :
And there shall the daughters of the ostrich dwell ;
And there shall the satyrs hold their revels.

26 ISAIAH. Chap. XIIL
22 And wolves shaU howl to one another in their palaces;
And dragons in their voluptuous pavilions.
And her time is near come ;
And her days shaU not be prolonged,
CHAP. ] For Jehovah will have compassion on Jacob,
^^^' And will yet choose Israel,
And he shaU give them- rest upon their own land :
And the stranger shall be joined unto them,
And shaU cleave unto the house of Jacob,
2 And the nations shaU take them, and bring them into
their own place ;
And the house of Israel shall possess them in the land
of Jehovah,
As servants, and as handmaids :
And they shaU take them captive, whose captives they
were;
And they shall rule over their oppressors,
3 And it shaU come to pass in that day, that Jehovah
¦shall give thee rest from thine afiUction, and from thy
disquiet, and from the hard servitude which was laid
4 upon thee ; and thou shalt pronounce this parable upon
the king of Babylon ; and shalt say :
How hath the oppressor ceased ! the exactress of gold
ceased !
5 Jehovah hath broken the staff of the wicked, the sceptre
of the rulers,
6 He that smote the peoples in wrath, with a stroke unre
mitted ;
He that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and
none hindereth,
7 The whole earth is at rest, is quiet ; they burst forth in
to a joyful shout :
8 Even the fir-trees rejoice over thee, the cedars of Li
banus :
Since thou art fallen, no feUer hath come up against us,
9 Hades from beneath is moved because of thee, to meet
thee at thy coming :
He rouseth for thee the mighty dead, all the great chiefs
of the earth ;
He maketh to rise up from their thrones, all the kings
of the nations.

Chap, XIV. ISAIAH. 27
10 All of them shall accost thee, and shall say unto thee :
Art thou, even thou too, become weak as we ? art thou
made hke unto us ?
1 1 Is then thy pride brought down to the grave ; the sound
of thy sprightly instruments ?
Is the vermin become thy couch, and the earth-worm
thy covering ?
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of
the morning !
Art cut dovra to the earth, thou that didst subdue the
nations !
13 Yet thou didst say in thy heart : I will ascend the hea
vens;
Above the stars of God I wUl exalt my throne ;
And I wiU sit upon the mount of the divine presence,
on the sides of the north :
14 1 will ascend above the highths of the clouds ; I will be
Uke the Most High,
15 But thou shalt be brought down to the grave, to the
sides of the pit,
16 Those that see thee shall look attentively at thee ; they
shall well consider thee :
Is this the raan, that made the earth to tremble ; that
shook the kingdoras ?
17 That raade the world like a desert; that destroyed the
cities ? •
That never disraissed his captives to their own horae ?
18 All the kings of the nations, all of them,
Lie down in glory, each in his own sepulchre :
19 But thou art cast out of the grave, as the tree abomi
nated ;
Clothed with the slain, with the' pierced by the sword,
With them that go down to the stones of the pit; as a
trodden carcass,
20 Thou shalt not be joined unto them in burial ;
Because thou hast destroyed thy country, thou hast slain
thy people :
The seed of evil doers shall never be renowned,
21 Prepare ye slaughter for his chUdren, for the iniquity
of their fathers ;
Lest they rise, and possess the earth ; and fill the face
of the world with cities.

28 ISAIAH. Chap. XIV.
22 For I wiU arise against thera, saith Jehovah God of
Hosts :
And I wUl cut off from Babylon the name, and the rem
nant;
And the son, and the son's son, saith Jehovah,
23 And I wiU make it an inheritance for the porcupine, and
pools of water ;
And I wiU plunge it in the miry gulph of destruction,
saith Jehovah God of Hosts,
24 Jehovah God of Hosts hath sworn, saying :
Surely as I have devised, so shall it be ;
And as I have purposed, that thing shaU stand :
25 To crush the Assyrian in my land, and to trample him
on my mountains.
Then shall his yoke depart frora off them ;
And his burthen shaU be reraoved from off their shoulder,
26 This is the decree, which is determined on the whole
earth ;
And this the hand, which is stretched out over all the
nations :
27 For Jehovah God of Hosts hath- decreed; and who
shall disannul it ?
And it is his hand that is stretched out ; and who shall
turn it back ?

28 In the year in which ahaz the king died, this
oracle was delivered,
29 Rejoice not, 0«Philistia, with one consent,
Because the rod, that smote thee, is broken :
For from the root of the serpent shall come forth a
basilisk ;
And his fruit shall be a flying fiery serpent,
30 For the poor shall feed on my choice first-fruits;
And the needy shall lie down in security :
But he wUl kUl thy root with drought ;
And thy remnant he will slay,
31 Howl, O gate; cry out, O city !
O Philistia, thou art altogether sunk in consternation !
For frora the north cometh a smoke ;
And there shall not be a straggler among his levies.

Chap. XIV. ISAIAH. 29
32 And what answer .shall be given to the ambassadors of
the nations ?
That Jehovah hath laid the foundation of Sion ;
And the poor of his people shall take refuge in her.

CHAP. 1 The oracle concerning moab,
XV. Because in the night Ar is destroyed, Moab is un
done !
Because in the night Kir is destroyed, Moab is undone !
2 He goeth up to Beth-Dibon, to the high places to weep :
Over Nebo, and over Medeba, shall Moab howl :
On every head there is baldness ; every beard is shorn,
3 In her streets they gird theraselves with sackcloth :
On her house-tops, and to her open places.
Every one howleth, descendeth with weeping,
4 And tieshbon and Eleale cry out aloud ;
Unto Jahats is their voice heard :
Yea the very loins of Moab cry out ;
Her Ufe is grievous unto her,
5 The heart of Moab crieth within her ;
To Tsoar [she crieth out] like the lowing of a young
heifer :
Yea the ascent of Luhith with wteping shall they ascend ;
Yea in the way of Horonaim they raise a cry of destruc
tion,
6 For the waters of Nimrim shaU become desolate :
For the pasture is withered, the tender plant faileth, the
green herb is no more,
7 Wherefore the riches, which they have gained, shall
perish ;
And what they have deposited, to the valley of wUlows
shall be carried away,
8 For the cry encompasseth the border of Moab :
To Eglaim reacheth her moan ; and to Beer-Elim her
howUng,
9 Yea the waters of Dimon are full of blood :
Yet will I bring more evUs upon Dunon ;
Upon the escaped of Moab and Ariel, and the remnant
of Admah,

30 ISAIAH. Chap. XVL
CHAP. I I wiU send forth the son of the ruler of the land-, "
XVI. From Selah of the desert to the mount of the daughter
of Sion,
2 And as wandering birds, driven from the nest,
So shaU be the daughters of Moab at the fords of Ar-
non,
3 Impart counsel ; interpose with equity ;
Make thy shadow as the night in the midst of noon-day.
Hide the outcasts ; discover not the fugitive,
4 Let the outcasts of Moab sojourn with thee, [O Sion] ;
Be thou to them a covert from the destroyer.
For the oppressor is no more, the destroyer ceaseth ;
He that trampled you under foot is perished from- the
land,
5 And the throne shall be established in mercy.
And in truth shall One sit thereon ;
In the tabernacle of David a judge ;
CarefiiUy searching out the right, and dispatching justice,
6 We have heard the pride of Moab ; he is very proud ;
His haughtiness, and his pride, and his anger : vain are
his lies,
7 Therefore shall Moab lament aloud ;
For the whole people of Moab shall he lament ;
For the men of Kirhares shall ye make a moan,
8 For the fields of Heshbon are put to shame ;
The vine of Sibmah languisheth,
Whose generous shoots overpowei'ed the mighty lords
of the nations ;
They reached unto Jazer; they strayed to the desert;
Her branches extended themselves, they passed over the
sea,
9 Wherefore I wUl weep, as with the weeping of Jazer,
for the vine of Sibmah ;
I will water thee with 'my tears, O Heshbon and Elea-
leh!
For upon thy summer fruits, and upon thy vintage,
the destroyer hath faUen,
10 And joy and gladness is taken away from the fruitful
field;
And in the vineyards they shall not sing, they shaU not
shout :
In the vats the treader shall not tread out the wine ;
An end is put tp the shouting.

Chap, XVL ISAIAH. 31
1 1 Wherefore my bowels for Moab like a harp shall sound ;
And mine entrails for Kirhares,
12 And it shaU be, when Moab shaU see,
That he hath wearied himself out on the high place,
That he shall enter his sanctuary,
To intercede : but he shall not prevail,
13 This is the word, which Jehovah spake concerning
14 Moab long ago; but now Jehovah hath spoken, say
ing:
After three years, as the years of an hireling,
The glory of Moab shall be debased, in all his great
multitude ;
And the remnant shall be few, small, and without
strength.

CHAP. 1 The oracle concerning Damascus,
XVIL Behold Damascus is removed, so as to be no more
a city :
It shall even become a ruinous heap,
2 The cities are deserted for ever ;
They shaU be given up to the flocks,
And they shall lie down, and none shall scare them
away,
3 And the fortress shall cease from Ephraim,
And the kingdom frora Daraascus :
And the pride of Syria shall be as the glory of the sons
of Israel ;
Saith Jehovah the God of Hosts,
4 And it shall come to pass in that day,
The glory of Jacob shall be diminished,
And the fatness of his flesh shaU become lean,
5 And it shall be, as when one gathereth the standing
harvest, '
And his arm reapeth the ears of corn :
Or as when one gleaneth ears in the vaUey of Rephaira,
6 A gleaning shall be left in it, as in the shaking of the
olive tree;
Two or three berries on the top of the uppermost bough ;
Four or five on the straggling fruitful branches :
Saith Jehovah the God of Israel,

32 ISAIAH. Chap. XVII.
7 In that day shall a man regard his Maker,
And toward' the Holy One of Israel shaU his eyes look :
8 And he shaU not regard the altars dedicated to the
work of his hands ;
And what his fingers have made, he shaU not respect;
Nor the groves, nor the solar statues,
9 In that day shall his strongly fenced cities become
Like the desertion of the Hivites and the Amorites,
When they deserted the land before the face of the sons
of Israel ;
And the land shall become a desolation,
10 Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation,
And hast not remembered the rock of thy strength ;
Therefore, when thou shalt have planted pleasant plants,
And shalt have set shoots from a foreign soil ;
11 In the day when thou shalt have made thy plants to
grow,
And in the morning, when thou shalt have made thy
shoots to spring forth ;
Even in the day of possession shall the harvest be taken
away,
And there shall be sorrow without hope.

12 Wo to the multitude of the numerous peoples.
Who make a sound like the sound of the seas :
And to the roaring of the nations,
Who make a roaring like the roaring of mighty waters,
13 Like the roaring of mighty waters do the nations roar;
But he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far away ;
And they shall be driven Uke the chaff of the hUls be
fore the wind,
And like the gossamer before the whirlwind,
14 At the season of evening, behold terror !
Before the morning, and he is no more !
This is the portion of those that spoil us ;
And the lot of those that plunder us,
CHAP. 1 Ho ! to the land of the winged cymbal,
XVIII. Which borders on the rivers of Cush ;
2 Which sendeth ambassadors on the sea,
And in vessels of papyrus on the face of the waters.

Chap. XVIIL ISAIAH. 33
Go, ye swift messengers,
To a nation stretched out in length, and smoothed ;
To a people terrible from the first, and hitherto ;
A nation meted out by line, and trodden down ;
Whose land the rivers have nourished,
3 Yea, all ye that inhabit the world, and that dwell on the
earth,
When the standard is lifted up on the mountains, be
hold !
And when the trumpet is sounded, hear !
4 For thus hath Jehovah said unto me :
I will sit StiU, and regard my fixed habitation;
Like the clear heat after rain,
Like the dewy cloud in the day of harvest,
5 Surely before the vintage, when the bud is perfect,
And the blossom is become a swelling grape ;
He shall cut off the shoots with pruning-hooks,
And the branches he shall take away, he shall cut down,
6 They shaU be left together to the rapacious bird of the
mountains ;
And to the wild beaste of the earth :
And the rapacious bird shall summer upon it ;
And every wild beast of the earth shall winter upon it,
7 At that time shall a gift be brought to Jehovah the '
God of Hosts,
From a people stretched out in length, and smoothed ;
And from a people terrible from the first, and hitherto ;
A nation meted out by line, and trodden down,
Whose land the rivers have nourished ;
To the place of the name of Jehovah God of Hosts, to
Mount Sion,

CHAP. 1 The oracle concerning egypt.
XIX. Behold, Jehovah rideth
On a swift cloud, and cometh to Egypt !
And the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence ;
And the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of her.
2 And I wdl excite Egyptians against Egyptians,
And they shall fight, every man against his brother, and
every man against his neighbour :

34.

ISAIAH. Chap. XIX.

City against city, kingdom against kingdom,
3 And the spirit of Egypt shaU fad in the midst of her ;
And I will swallow up her counsel :
And they shall seek to the idols, and to the sorcerers,
And to the necromancers, and to the wizards,
4 And I wiU give up Egypt bound into the hands of cruel
lords,
And a fierce king shall rule over them ;
Saith the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts,
6 Then shaU the waters faU from the sea.
And the river shall be wasted and dried up,
6 And the streams shall become putrid ;
The canals of Egypt shaU be emptied and dried up.
The reed and the lotus shall wither :
7 The meadow by the canal, even at the mouth of the
canal,
And all that is sown by the canal.
Shall wither, be blasted, and be no more,
8 And the fishers shaU mourn, and lament ;
All those that cast the hook in the river.
And those that spread nets on the face of the waters,
shall languish,
9 And they that work the fine flax shall be confounded,
And they that weave net-work,
10 And her stores shaU be 'broken up;
Even of all that make a gain of pools for fish,
1 1 Surely, the princes of Zoan are fools ;
The wise counseUors of Pharaoh have counseUed a bru
tish counsel.
How will ye boast unto Pharaoh :
I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings ?
12 Where are they; where, thy wise men? let them come;
And let them tell thee now, and let them declare,
What Jehovah God of Hosts hath determined against
Egypt.
13 The princes of Zoan are hecome fools, the princes of
Noph are deceived ;
They have caused Egypt to err, even the chief pillars of
her tribes.
14 Jehovah hath mingled in the midst of thera a spirit of
giddiness ;
And they have caused Egypt to err in all her works,
As a drunkard staggereth in his vomit :

Chap. XIX. ISAIAH. 35
15 Nor shall there be any work in Egypt,
Which the head or tad, the branch or rush, may per
form.
16 In that day the Egyptians shall be as women :
And they shall tremble and fear,
At the shaking of the hand of Jehovah God of Hosts,
Which he shall shake over them.
17 And the land of Judah shall becpme a terror to the
Egyptians :
If any one raention it unto thera, they shall fear ;
Because of the counsel of Jehovah God of Hosts,
WTiich he hath counselled against them.
18 In that day, there shall be five cities in the land of
Egyptj
Speaking the language of Canaan,
And swearing unto Jehovah God of Hosts :
One of them shall be called the City of the Sun,
19 In that day, there shaU be an altar to Jehovah
In the midst of the land of Egypt ;
And a pillar by the border thereof to Jehovah :
20 And it shall be for a sign, and for 'a vntness,
To Jehovah God of Hosts in the land of Egypt :
That, when they cried unto Jehovah because of oppres
sors,
He sent unto them a saviour, and a vindicator, and he
delivered thera,
21 And Jehovah shall be known to Egypt,
And the Egyptians^ shall know Jehovah in that day ;
And they shall serve him with sacrifice and oblation.
And they shall vow a vow unto Jehovah, and shall per
form it.
22 And Jehovah shall smite Egypt, smiting and healing
her;
And they shall turn unto Jehovah, and he will be en
treated by them, and will heal thera.
23 In that day, there shall be a high-way from Egypt to
Assyria ;
And the Assyrian shaU come into Egypt, and the
Egyptian into Assyria :
And the Egyptian shall worship with the Assyrian.
24 In that day, Israel shall be reckoned a third,
Together with Egypt and Assyria ;
A blessina: in the midst of the earth :

36

ISAIAH. Chap. XIX.

25 Whom Jehovah God of Hosts hath blessed, saying:
Blessed be my people, Egypt;
And Assyria, the work of my hands ;
And Israel, mine inheritance.

CHAP, 1 In the year that Tharthan marched to Ashdod;
^X- whither he was sent by Sargon king of Assyria ; (and he
fought against Ashdod, and took it) ; at that time Je-
2 HOVAH spake by Isaiah, the son of Amots, saying:
Go, loose the sackcloth from off thy loins;
And put off thy shoes from thy feet,
3 And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And Je
hovah said:
As my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and bare
foot;
A sign and a prodigy of three years,
Upon Egypt and upon Cush :
4 So shall the king of Assyria lead
The captives of Egypt, and the exUes of Cush,
The young and the old, naked and barefoot ;
With their hind-parts discovered, to the shame of the
Egyptians,
5 And they [of Ashdod] shall be terrified, and ashamed
of Cush in whom they trusted.
And of Egypt, in whom they gloried,
6 And the inhabitant of this country shall say, in that
day:
Behold, such is the object of our trust,
To whom we fled for succour,
That we might be deUvered from the king of Assyria !
How then shall we escape ?

CHAP. .1 The oracle concerning, the desert of the sea,
XXL Like the southern tempests violently rushing along,
From the desert he cometh, from the terrible country,
2 A dreadful vision !• it is revealed unto me :
The plunderer is plundered, and the destroyer is de
stroyed !

Chap. XXL ISAIAH. 37
Go up, O Elam ; form the siege, O Media !
I have put an end to aU her vexations,
3 . Therefore are my loins fiUed with pain :
Anguish hath seized me, as the anguish of a woman in
travail,
I am convulsed, so that I cannot hear; I am astonished,
so that I cannot see,
4 My heart is bewildered ; terrors have scared rae :
The evening, for which I longed, hath he turned into
horror,
5 The table is prepared, the watch is set ; they eat, they
drink :
Rise, O ye princes; anoint the shield,
6 For thus hath the Lord said unto rae :
Go, set a watchraan on his station ; .
Whatever he shall see, let him report unto thee,
7 And he saw a chariot with two riders ;
A rider on an ass, a rider on a carael.
And he observed diligendy with extreme diligence,
8 And he that looked out on the watch cried aloud :
O my Lord, I keep my station all the day long ;
And on ray ward have I continued every night,
9 And behold, here coraeth a man, one of the two riders :
And he answereth, and sayeth, Babylon is fallen, is
fallen ;
And all the graven idols of her gods are broken to the
ground,
10 O my threshing, and the corn of my floor !
What I have heard from Jehovah God of Hosts, the
God of Israel,
That I have declared unto you.

11 The oracle concerning dumah,
A voice crieth unto me from Seir :
Watchman, what from the night ?
Watchman, what from the night ?
12 The watchman replieth :
The morning cometh, and also the night.
If ye will inquire, inquire ye: come again,
G

ISAIAH. Chap. XXI.

13 The oracle concerning Arabia.
In the forest, at even, shall ye lodge,
O ye caravans of Dedan !
14 To meet the thirsty bring ye forth water,
O inhabitants of the southern country ;
With bread prevent the fugitive.
15 For from the face of the sword they shaU flee :
From the face of the drawn sword ;
And from the face -of the bended bow ;
And from the face of the grievous war,
IS For thus hath the Lord said unto me :
Within yet a year, as the years of an hireling.
Shall all the glory of Kedar be consumed ;
17 And the remainder of the number of the mighty bow
men,
Of the sons of Kedar, shall be diminished :
For Jehovah the God of Israel hath spoken it.

CHAP. 1 The oracle concerning the valley of vision.
XXIL What aileth thee now, that all thine inhabitants are
gone up to the house-tops ?
2 O thou, that wast full of noise,
A tumultuous city, a joyous city f
Thy slain were not slain by the sword,
Neither did they die in battle.
3 All thy leaders are gone off together ; they are fled from
the bow;
All that were found in thee are fled together, they are
gone far away,
4 Wherefore I said : Turn away from me ; I vnll weep
bitteriy :
Strive not to comfort me for the desolation of the daugh
ter of my people.
5 For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of
perplexity;
The day of the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts in the
valley of vision :

Chap. XXII. ISAIAH. 39
Breaking down the wall, and crying to the mountain,
6 And Elam beareth the quiver ;
With chariots cometh the Syrian, and with horsemen ;
And Kir uncovereth the shield,
7 And thy choicest valleys shaU be filled with chariots ;
And the horsemen shall set themselves in array against
the gate ;
8 And th^ barrier of Judah shaU be laid open :
Then thou shalt look towards the arsenal of the house
of the forest,
9 And the breaches of the city of David, ye shall see that
they are many ;
And ye shall coUect the waters of the lower pool ;
10 And the houses of Jerusalem ye shaU number;
And ye shaU break down the houses to fortify the, ram
part:
11 And ye shaU raake a lake between the two walls.
To receive the waters of the old pool.
But ye look not to him, that hath disposed this :
And him, that formed it of old, ye regard not,
12 And the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts caUed in that
day,
To weeping, and to lamentation ;
And to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth : "
13 But, behold, joy and gladness,
Slaying of oxen, and kUling of sheep ;
Eating of flesh, and drinking of wine :
Let us eat, and drink ; for to-raorrow we die,
14 And the voice of Jehovah God of Hosts was revealed
to raine ears :
Surely this your iniquity shall not be expiated, till ye
die,
Saith the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts,

15 Thus saith the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts : Go,
get thee to this treasurer, unto Shebna, who is over the
household ; and say unto him :
16 What hast thou here ? and whom hast thou here ?
That thou hast hewn out here a sepulchre for thy
self?
O thou that hewest out thy sepulchre on high,
That gravest in the rock an habitation for thyself !

40 ISAIAH. Chap. XXIL
17 Behold Jehovah wiU cast thee out.
Casting thee violently out, and wiU surely cover thee :
18 He wUl whirl thee round and round, and cast theeaway.
Like a baU [from a sling] into a wide country :
There shalt thou die; and there shaU thy glorious
chariots
Become the shame of the house of thy lord,
19 And I will drive thee from thy station, •
And from thy state wUl I overthrow thee,
20 And in that day I wiU call my servant,
Even Eliakim the son of Hilkiah ;
21 And I wiU clothe him with thy robe.
And with thy baldric will I strengthen him :
And thy government wiU I commit to his hand ;
And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusa
lem,
And to the house of Judah :
22 And I wUl lay the key of the house of David upon his
shoulder ;
And he shaU open, and none shall shut ;
And he shall shut, and none shaU open,
23 And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place ;
And he shall become a glorious seat for his father's
house. ,
24 And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his
. father's house.
The offspring of high and of low degree;
Every small vessel ; from every sort of goblets,
To every sort of meaner vessels,
25 In that day, saith Jehovah God of Hosts,
The nad once fastened in a sure place shall be moved ;
And it shall be hewn down, and it shall fall ;
And the burthen which was upon it, shall be cut off:
For Jehovah hath spoken it.

CHAP. 1 The oracle concerning tyre.
Howl, O ye ships of Tarshish !
For she is utterly destroyed both within and without :
From the land of Chittira the tidings are brought unto
them.

Chap. XXIIL ISAIAH. 41
2 Be sUent, O ye inhabitants of the sea-coast :
The merchants of Sidon, they that pass over the sea,
crowded thee,
3 And the seed of the Nile, growing frora abundant wa
ters;
The harvest of the river, was her revenue :
And she becarae the mart of the nations,
4 Be thou ashamed, O Sidon ; for the sea hath spoken.
Even the mighty fortress of the sea, saying :
I am, as if I had not travaUed, nor brought forth chil
dren;
As if I had not nourished youths, nor educated virgins,
5 When the tidings shall reach Egypt,
They shall be seized with anguish at the tidings of Tyre,
6 Pass ye over to Tarshish ; howl, O ye inhabitants of the
sea-coast !
7 Is this your triumphant city ; whose antiquity is of the
earliest date ?
Her own feet bear her far away to sojourn,
8 Who hath purposed this against Tyre, who dispensed
crowns ;
Whose merchants were princes; whose traders were
nobles of the land ?
9 Jehovah God of Hosts hath counseUed it ;
To stain the pride of aU beauty ;
To make contemptible aU the nobles of the earth,
10 Overflow thy land, like a river,
O daughter of Tarshish ; the mound [that kept in thy
waters] is no more,
1 1 He hath stretched his hand over the sea ; he hath shaken
the kingdoms :
Jehovah hath issued a command concerning Canaan,
. that they should destroy her strong places,
12 And he hath said: Thou shalt triumph no more,
O thou defloured virgin, the daughter of Sidon !
To Chittira arise, pass over ; even there thou shalt have
no rest,
13 Behold the land of the Chaldeans;
This people was of no apcount :
(The Assyrian founded it for the inhabitants of the
desert ;

42

ISAIAH. Chap. XXIIL

They raised the watch-towers, they set up the palaces
thereof) :
This people hath reduced her to a ruin,
14 Howl, O ye ships of Tarshish; for your stronghold is
destroyed,
15 And it shall corae to pass in that day ;
That Tyre shaU be forgotten seventy years,
According to the days of one king :
At the end of seventy years,
Tyre shall sing, as the harlot singeth.
16 Take thy lyre, go about the city, O harlot long forgotten ;
Strike the lyre artfully; raultiply the song; that thou
mayest again be remembered,
17 And at the end of seventy years,
Jehovah wiU take account of Tyre :
And she shall return to her gainful practice ;
And she shall play the harlot vdth aU the kingdoms of
the world,
That are upon the face of the earth,
18 But her traific, and her gain, shaU be holy to Jehovah :
It shall not be treasured, nor shall it be kept in store;
For her traffic shall be for them, that dwell before Je
hovah,
For food sufficient, and for durable clothing.

CHAP. 1 Behold, Jehovah emptieth the land and maketh it
XXIV. waste ;
He even turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad
the inhabitants,
2 And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest;
As with the servant, so with his master ;
As with the handraaid, so with her mistress ;
As with the buyer, so with the seller ;
As with the borrower, so with the lender ;
As with the usurer, so with the giver of usury,
3 The land shall be utterly eraptied, and utterly spoiled;
For Jehovah hath spoken this word,
4 The land mourneth, it with'ereth ;
The world languisheth, it withereth ;
The lofty people of the land do languish.

Chap. XXIV. ISAIAH. 13
5 The land is even polluted under her inhabitants ;
For they have transgressed the law, they have changed
llie decree ;
They have broken the everlasting covenant.
6 Therefore hath a curse devoured the land ;
Because they are guilty, that dwell in her.
Therefore are the inhabitants of the land destroyed ;
And few are the mortals that are left in her,
7 The new vtdne mourneth ; the vine languisheth ;
AU, that were glad of heart, sigh,
8 The joyful sound of" the tabour ceaseth ; »¦
The noise of exultation is no more ; '
The joyful sound of the harp ceaseth :
9 With songs they shall no more drink wine ;
The palm-wine shaU be bitter to them that drink it,
10 The city is broken down; it is desolate:
Every house is obstructed, so that no one can enter.
1 1 There is a cry in the streets for wine ;
All gladness is passed away ;
The joy of the whole land is banished.
12 Desolation is left in the city ;
And Vidth a great tumult the gate is battered down,
13 Yea thus shaU it be in the very centre of the land, in
the midst of the people ;
As the shaking of the olive ; as the gleaning, when the
vintage is finished,
14 But these shall lift up their voice, they shall sing;
The waters shall resound with the exaltation of Jeho
vah,
15 Wherefore in the distant coasts, glorify ye Jehovah ;
In the distant coasts of the sea, the name of Jehovah,
the God of Israel,
16 From the uttermost part of the land, we have heard
songs, Glory to the righteous I
But I said, Alas, my wretchedness, my wretchedness !
Wo is me ! the plunderers plunder ;
Yea the plunderers stUl continue their cruel depreda
tions,
17 The terror, the pit, and the snare.
Are upon thee, O inhabitant of the land :
18 And it shall be, that whoso fleeth from the terror.
He shall fall into the pit;
And whoso escapeth from the pit,

44

ISAIAH. Chap. XXIV.

He shall be taken in the snare :
For the flood-gates from on high are opened ;
And the foundations of the earth tremble,
19 The land is grievously shaken;
The land is utterly shattered to pieces ;
The land is violently moved out of her place ;
20 The land reeleth to and fro like a drunkard;
And moveth this way and that, like a lodge for a night:
For her iniquity lieth heavy upon her ;
And she shaU faU, and rise no more,
21 And it shall come to pass in that day,
Jehovah shaU suramon on high the host that is on high ;
And on earth the kings of the earth :
22 And they shaU be gathered together, as in a bundle for
the pit ;
And shaU be closely iraprisoned in the prison :
And after many days, account shall be taken of them,
23 And the moon shall be confounded, and the sun shall
be ashamed;
For Jehovah God of Hosts shaU reign
On Mount Sion, and in Jerusalem ;
And before his ancients shall he be glorified,

CHAP. 1 O Jehovah, thou art my God :
XXV. I will exalt thee ; I will praise thy name :
For thou hast effected wonderful things ;
Counsels of old time, promises immutably true.
2 For thou hast made the city an heap ;
The strongly fortified citadel a ruin :
The palace of the proud ones, that it should be no more
a city;
That it never should be built up again,
3 Therefore shall the fierce people glorify thee ;
The city of the formidable nations shall fear thee :
4 For thou hast been a defence to the poor ;
A defence to the needy in his distress :
A refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat ;
When the blast of the formidable rages like a winter
storm,
5 As the heat in a parched land, the tumult of the proud
shalt thou bring low ;

Chap. XXV. ISAIAH. 4,5
As tho J^<=»* V " tlj^i-t cloud, the triumph of the for
midable shall be humbled, ^
6 And Jehovah God of Hosts shall make,
For all the peoples, in this mountain,
A feast of delicacies, a feast of old wines :
Of deUcacies exquisitely rich, pf old wines perfectly re-
fuied, *
7 And on this raountain shall he destroy
The covering, that covered the face of all the peoples ;
And the vail, that was spread over all the nations,
8 He shall utterly destroy death for ever ;
And the Lord Jehovah shall wipe away the tear frora
off all faces ;
And the reproach of his people shall he remove from
off the whole earth :
For Jehovah hath spoken it,
9 In that day shaU they say ;
Behold, this is our God ;
We have trusted in him, and he hath saved us :
This is Jehovah ; we have trusted in him ;
We will rejoice, and triumph, in his salvation,
10 For the hand of Jehovah shall give rest upon this
mountain ;
And Moab shall be threshed in his place,
As the straw is threshed under the wheels of the car,
1 1 And he shall stretch out his hands in the midst thereof,
As he, that sinketh, stretcheth out his hands to swim :
But God shall bring down his pride with the sudden
gripe of his hands,
12 And the bulwark of thy high walls shall he lay low :
He shall bring them down to the ground ; he shall lay
thera in the dust.

CHAP. 1 In that day shall this song be sung :
XXVL In the land of Judah we have a strong city ;
Salvation shall he establish for walls and bulwarks,
2 Open ye the gates, and let the righteous nation enter;
3 Constant in the truth, stayed in mind :
Thou shalt preserve thera in perpetual peace,
Because they have trusted in thee.

^ ISAIAH. chap. XXVL
4 Trust ve in Jehovah for eyeiu  :,^Z^„
^^^Zi^Jj~—-^'^'^'^^^^~^^^^S protection,
5 Forhe hath humbled those, that dwell on high;
The lofty city, he hath brought her down ;
He hath brought her down to the ground :
He hath leveUed herjvith the dust,
6 The foot shall tranl^ upon her ;
The feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.
7 The way of the righteous is perfectly straight ;
Thou most exactly leveUest the path of the righteous.
8 Even in the way of thy laws, O Jehovah,
We have placed our confidence in thy name ;
And in the remembrance, of thee is the desire of our
soul.
9 With my soul have I desired thee in the night ;
Yea with my inraost spirit in the morn have I sought
thee.
For when thy judgraents are in the earth,
The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
10 Though mercy be shewn to the wicked, yet will he not
learn righteousness :
In the very land of rectitude he will deal perversely,;
And wUl not regard the majesty of Jehovah.
1 1 Jehovah, thy hand is lifted up, yet wiU they not see :
But they shaU see, with confusion, thy zeal for thy
people ;
Yea the fire shall burn up thine adversaries.
12 Jehovah, thou wilt ordain for us peace :
For even all our mighty deeds thou hast performed for
us.
13 O Jehovah, our God !
Other lords, exclusive of thee, have had ^iominion over
us:
Thee only, and thy name, henceforth will we celebrate.
14 They are dead, they shall not live;
They are deceased tyrants, they shall not rise.
Therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them ;
And all memorial of them thou hast abolished.
15 Thou hast added to the nation, O Jehovah;
Thou hast added to tlie nation ; thou art glorified :
Thou hast extended far all the borders of the land.
16 O Jehovah, in aflfliction have we sought thee;

Chap. XXVL ISAIAH. ^^
* Wo LC.-.0 p„,,„.^ ^„^ humble suppUcation, when thv
chastisement was upon us. "^^ ' ""'^" "'y
17 As a woman, that hath conceived, when her delivery
approacheth,
Is in anguish, crieth out aloud, in her travail ;
Thus have we been before thee, O Jehovah.
18 We have conceived; we have been in anguish; we have,
as it were, brought forth wind :
Salvation is not wrought in the land ;
Neither are the inhabitants of the world fallen.
19 Thy dead shall live; my deceased, they shaU rise:
Awake, and sing, ye that dweU in the dust !
For thy dew is as the dew of the dawn ;
But the earth shall cast forth, as an abortion, the de
ceased tyrants.
20 Come, O my people ; retire into thy secret apart
ments ;
And shut thy door after thee :
Hide thyself for a little while, for a moment ;
Until the indignation shall have passed away.
21 For behold, Jehovah issueth forth from his place ;
To punish for his iniquity the inhabitant of the earth ;
And the earth shall disclose the blood that is upon her ;
And shaU no longer cover her slain.
CHAP. 1 In that day shall Jehovah punish vrith his sword ;
XXVII. JJis well-tempered, and great, and strong sword ;
Leviathan the rigid serpent,
And Leviathan the winding serpent :
And shall slay the monster, that is in the sea.

2 In that day,
To the beloved Vineyard, sing ye a responsive song.
3 J, It is I, Jehovah, that preserve her :
I will water her every moment ;
I will take care of her by night;
And by day I will keep guard over her,
4 V, I have no wall for my defence :
O that I had a fence of the thorn and brier !
J, Against them should I march in battle,
I shoidd burn them up together.

48

ISAIAH. CHAP. XXVIL

Ah ' let her rath£rJake>old-j^£--^^r'°'*^

:k711,
 ^ BKe^ith me !
Peace let him make with me !
6 J, They that come from the root of Jacob shall flourish,
Israel shall bud forth ;
And they shall fiU the face of the world with fruit
7 Hath he smitten hira, as he sraiteth those that smote
him?
And like the slaughter of those, that slew him, is he
slain ?
8 In just measure, when thou inflictest the stroke, wilt
thou debate with her ;
With due deUberation, even in the rough tempest, in
the day of the east wind,
9 Wherefore on this condition shall the iniquity of Jacob
be expiated ;
And so shall he reap the whole benefit of the removal
of his sin ;
If he shall render all the stones of the altar,
Like the limestones scattered abroad;
And if the groves and the images rise no more,
10 But the strongly fortified city shall be desolate;
An habitation forsaken, and deserted as a wilderness.
There shall the bullock feed, and there shall he lie down ;
And he shall browse on the tender shoots thereof,
1 1 When her boughs are withered, they shall be broken :
Women shaU come, and set them on a blaze.
Surely it is a people void of understanding ;
Wherefore he, that made him, shall not have pity on
him;
And he, that formed him, shall shew him no favour,
12 And it shall come to pass in that day,
Jehovah shall make a gathering of his fruit, from the
flood of the river,
To the stream of Egypt ;
And ye shall be gleaned up.
One by one, O ye sons of Israel.
1,3 And it shall come to pass in that day,
The great trumpet shall be sounded ;
And those shall come, who were perishing in the land
of Assyria ;
And who were dispersed in the land of Egypt ;

Chap. XXVII. ISAIAH. 49
And they shall bow themselves down before Jehovah,
In the holy mountain, in Jerusalem,

CHAP. 1 Wo to the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim,
XXVIII. And to the fading fiower of their glorious beauty !
To those, that are at the head of the rich valley, that are
stupified with wine !
2 Behold the mighty one, the exceedingly strong one !
Like a storm of hail, like a destructive tempest ;
Like a rapid flood of mighty waters pouring down ;
He shall dash them to the ground with his hand,
3 They shall be trodden under foot,
The proud crowns of the drunkards of Ephraim :
4 And the fading flower of their glorious beauty.
Which is at the head of the rich valley,
ShaU be as the early fruit before the summer ;
Which whoso seeth, he plucketh it immediately ;
And it is no sooner in his hand, than he swalloweth it.
5 In that day shall Jehovah God of Hogts become a
beauteous croWn,
And a glorious diadem, to the remnant of his people :
6 And a spirit of judgment, to them that sit in judgment;
And strength to thera, that repell the war to the gate
[of the enemy],
7 Biit even these have erred through wine, and through
strong drink they have reeled;
The priest and the prophet have erred through strong
drink ;
They are overwhelmed with wine; they have reeled
through strong drink :
They have erred in vision, they have stumbled in judg
ment,
8 For all their tables are full of vomit ;
Of filthiness, so that no place is free.
9 " Whpm [say they] would he teach knowledge ; and to
" whom would he impart instruction?
" To such as are weaned from the milk, as are kept back
" frora the breast?
10 " For it is command upon command; command upon
" command;

50

ISAIAH. Chap. XXVIII.

" Line upon Une; line up5n fine :
" A little here, and a little there,"
11 Yea verily, with a stamraering lip, and a strange tongue,
He shall speak unto this people,
12 For when he said unto them :
This is the true rest; give ye rest unto the weary ;
And this is the refreshment ; they would not hear.
13 Therefore shaU the word of Jehovah be indeed unto
them.
Command upon command, command upon command;
Line upon Une, line upon line ;
A little here, and a little there :
That they may go on, and fall backward;
And be broken, and snared, and caught.
14 Wherefore hear ye the word of* Jehovah, ye scoffers;
Ye of this people in Jerusalem, who utter sententious
speeches :
15 Who say, we have entered into a covenant with death ;
And with the grave we have made a treaty :
The overflowing plague, when it passeth through, shall
not reach us :
For we have made falsehood our refuge ;
And under deceit we have hidden ourselves,
16 Wherefore tlius saith the Lord Jehovah :
Behold, I lay in Sion for a foundation a stone, an ap
proved stone ;
A corner-stone, precious, immoveably fixed :
He, that trusteth in him, shall not be confounded,
17 And I will mete out judgment by the rule;
And strict justice, by the plummet :
And the had shaU sweep away the refuge of falsehood ;
And the hiding-place the waters shall overwhelm,
18 And your covenant with death shall be broken ;
And your treaty with the grave shall not stand :
When the overflowing plague passeth through,
By it shall ye be beaten down,
19 As soon as it passeth through, shall it seize you ;
Yea morning after morning shall it pass through, by
day and by night ;
And even the report alone shall cause terror,
20 For the bod is too short, for one to stretch himself out
at length ;

Chap. XXVIII. ISAIAH. 51
And the covering is too narrow, for one to gather him
self up under it,
21 For as in Mount Peratsim, Jehovah will arise;
As in the valley of Gibeon, shall he be moved with an
ger;
That he may execute his work, his strange work ;
And effect his operation, his unusual operation.
22 And now, give yourselves up to scoffing no more,
Lest your chastisements become more severe :
For a full and decisive decree have I heard,
Frora the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts, on the whole
land,
23 Listen ye, and hear ray voice ;
Attend, and hearken unto my words,
24 Doth the husbandman plough every day that he may
sow.
Opening, and breaking the clods of his field ?
25 When he hath made even the face thereof,
Doth not he then scatter the dill, and cast abroad the
cummin ;
And sow the wheat in due measure ;
And the barley, and the rye, hath its appointed Umit ?
26 For his God rightly instructeth him ; he furnisheth him
with knowledge,
27 The dill ismiot beaten out with the corn-drag ;
Nor is the wheel of the wain made to turn upon the
cummin :
But the dill is beaten out with the staff;
28 And the curarain with the flail : but the bread-corn with
the threshing-wain.
But not for ever vrill he continue thus to thresh it ;
Nor to vex it with the wheel of his wain ;
Nor to bruise it with the hoofs of his cattle,
29 This also proceedeth from Jehovah God of Hosts :
He sheweth hiraself wonderful in counsel, great in ope
ration.

52 ISAIAH. Chap. XXIX.

CHAP. 1 Wo to Ariel, to Ariel, the city which David be-
XXIX. sieged !
Add year to year ; let the feasts go round in their course,
2 Yet will I bring distress upon Ariel ;
And there shaU be continual mourning and sorrow :
And it shaU be unto me as the hearth of the great altar,
3 And I will encamp against thee, like David ;
And I will lay siege against thee vrith a mound ;
And I wUl erect towers against thee,
4 And thou shalt be brought low; thou shalt speak as
frora beneath the earth :
And from out of the dust thou shalt utter a feeble
speech ;
And thy voice shall come out of the ground, like that
of a necromancer :
And thy words from out of the dust shall give a small
shrill Sound,
5 But the multitude of the proud shall be like the small
dust;
And Uke the flitting chaff the multitude of the terrible :
Yea, the effect shall be momentary, in an instant,
6 Frora Jehovah God of Hosts there shall be a sudden
visitation,
With thunder, and earthquake, and a raighty voice ;
With storm, and tempest, and flame of devouring fire,
7 And like as a dream, a vision of the night.
So shall it be with the multitude of all the nations, that
fight against Ariel ;
And all their armies, and their towers, and those that
distress her,
8 As when a hungry man drearaeth ; and lo ! he seemeth
to eat;
But he awaketh, and his appetite is still unsatisfied :
And as a thirsty man drearaeth ; and lo ! he seemeth to
drink ;
But he awaketh, and he is still faint, and his appetite
still craving:
So shall it be with the multitude of all the nations,
Which have set themselves in array against Mount
Sion.

Chap. XXIX. ISAIAH. 53
9 They are struck with amazement, they stand asto
nished ;
They stare with a look of stupid surprise :
They are drunken, but not with wine ;
They stagger, but not with strong drink,
10 For Jehovah hath poured upon you a spirit of pro
found sleep ;
And he hath closed up your eyes :
The prophets, and the rulers ; the seers hath he blind-
' folded,
1 1 So that all the vision is to you, as the words of a book
sealed up ;
Which if one delivers to a man, that knoweth letters,
Saying, Read this, I pray thee ;
He answereth, I cannot read it ; for it is sealed up :
12 Or should the book be given to one, that knoweth not
letters,
Saying, Read this, I pray thee ;
He answereth, I know not letters,
13 VHierefore Jehovah hath said:
Forasmuch as this people draweth near with their mouth,
And honoureth rae with their lips,
WhUe their heart is far from me ;
And vain is their fear of me,
Teaching the commandments of raen ;
14 Therefore behold, I will again deal with this people,
In a raanner so wonderful and astonishing ;
That the vrisdom of the wise shall perish,
And the prudence of the prudent shall disappear,
15 Wo unto them, that are too deep for Jehovah in
forming secret designs ;
Whose deeds are in the dark ; and who say,
Who is there, that seeth us ; and who shall know us ?
16 Perverse as ye are ! shall the potter be esteemed as the
clay?
Shall the work say of the workman, He hath not made
me?
And shall the thing forraed say of the former of it, He
hath no understanding ?
1 7 Shall it not be but a very short space,
Ere Lebanon become like Carmel,
And Carmel appear like a desert?
H

54 ISAIAH. Chap. XXIX.
18 Then shaU the deaf hear the words of the book;
And the eyes of the blind, covered before with clouds
and darkness, shaU see,
19 The meek shall increase their joy in Jehovah;
And the needy shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.
20 For the terrible one faileth, the scoffer is no more;
And all that were vigilant in iniquity are utterly cut off:
21 Who bewildered the poor man in speaking ;
And laid snares for him, that pleaded in the gate;
And vrith falsehood subverted the righteous,
22 Therefore thus saith Jehovah the God of the house
of Jacob,
He who redeemed Abraham :
Jacob shall no more be ashamed ;
His face shall no more be covered with confusion :
23 For when his children shall see the work of my hands,
Among themselves shall they sanctify my name :
They shall sanctify the Holy One of Jacob,
And tremble before the God of Israel.
24 Those, that were led away with the spirit of error, shall
gain knowledge ;
And the malignant shall attend to instruction.
CHAP. 1 Wo unto the rebellious children, saith Jehovah;
XXX. Who form counsels, but not from me ;
Who ratify covenants, but not by my spirit :
That they may add sin to sin.
2 Who set forward to go down to Egypt ;
But have not inquired at my mouth :
To strengthen themselves with the strength of Pharaoh ;
And to trust in the shadow of Egypt.
3 But the strength of Pharaoh shall be your shame ;
And your trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.
4 Their princes were at Tsoan ;
And their ambassadors arrived at Hanes :
5 They were all ashamed of a people, that profited them
not;
Who were of no help, and of no profit;
But proved even a shame, and a reproach unto them.
6 The burthen of the beasts travelling southward,
Through a land of distress and difficulty:
Wlience come forth the Uoness, and the fierce lion ;
The viper, and the flying fiery serpent :

Chap. XXX. ISAIAH. 55
They carry on the shoulder of the young cattle their
wealth ;
And on the bunch of the camel their treasures :
To a people, that wUl not profit them,
7 For Egypt is a mere vapour ; in vain shall they help :
Wherefore have I called her, Rahab the inactive,
8 Go now, write it before them on a tablet ;
And record it in letters upon a book :
That it may be for future times ;
For a testimony for ever,
9 For this is a rebellious people, lying children ;
Children who choose not to hear the law of Jehovah :
10 Who say to the seers, See not;
And to the prophets, Prophesy not right things :
Speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits,
1 1 Turn aside from the way ; decline from the straight path ;
Remove from our sight the Holy One of Israel,
12 Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel :
Because ye have rejected this word ;
And have trusted in obliquity, and perversion ;
And have leaned entirely upon it :
13 Therefore shall this offence be unto you,
Like a breach threatening ruin ; a swelling in a high
wall;
Whose destruction cometh suddenly, in an instant,
14 It shall be broken, as when one breaketh a potter's
vessel :
He dasheth it to pieces, and spareth it not ;
So that there shall not be found a sherd among its frag
ments.
To take up fire from the hearth.
Or to dip up water from the cistern,
15 Verily thus saith the Lord Jehovah, the Holy One
of Israel :
By turning from your ways, and by abiding quiet, ye
shall be saved ;
In silence, and in pious confidence, shall be your strength:
But ye would not hearken,
16 And ye said : Nay, but on horses will we flee ;
Therefore shall ye be put to flight :
And oil swift coursers wUl we ride ;
Therefore shall they be swift, that pursue you.

56 ISAIAH. Chap. XXX.
17 One thousand, at the rebuke of one ;
At the rebuke of five, ten thousand of you shall flee :
' TiU ye be left as a standard on the summit of a moun
tain ;
And as a beacon on a high hUl,
18 Yet for this shall Jehovah wait to shew favourunto you ;
Even for this shaU he expect in silence, that he may
have mercy upon you : ,
(For Jehovah is a God of judgment;
Blessed are all they that trust in him) :
19 When a holy people shall dwell in Sion ;
When in Jerusalem thou shalt implore him with weep
ing:
At the voice of thy cry he shall be abundantly gracious
unto thee ;
No sooner shall he hear, than he shall answer thee,
20 Though Jehovah hath given you bread of distress, and
water of affliction ;
Yet the timely rain shall no more be restrained ;
But thine eyes shall behold the timely rain,
21 And thine ears shall hear the word ptompting thee be
hind :
Saying, This is the way ; walk ye in it ;
Turn not aside, to the right, or to the left.
22 And ye shall treat as defiled the covering of your idols
of silver ;
And the clothing of your molten images of gold r
Thou shalt cast them away like a polluted garment ;
Thou shalt say unto them, Be gone from rae,
23 And he shall give rain for thy seed.
With which thou shalt sow the ground ;
And bread of the produce of the ground :
And it shall be abundant and plenteous.
Then shall thy cattle feed in large pasture;
24 And the oxen, and the young asses, that till the ground,
Shall eat well-fermented maslin,
Winnowed with the van and the sieve.
25 And on every lofty raountain.
And on every high hill,
Shall be disparting rills, and streams of water.
In the day of the great slaughter, when the mighty fall.

Chap. XXX; ISAIAH. 57
26 And the light of the raoon shall be as the light of the
meridian sun ;
And the light of the meridian sun shaU be seven-fold :
In the day when Jehovah shall bind up the breach of
his people ;
And shall heal the wound, which his stroke hath in
flicted.
27 Lo ! the name of Jehovah cometh from afar ;
His wrath burneth, and the flame rageth violently :
His lips are filled with indignation ;
And his tongue is as a consuming fire.
28 His spirit is like a torrent overflowing ;
It shall reach to the midcUe of the neck :
He cometh to toss the nations with the van of perdition ;
And there shall be a J^ridle, to lead them astray, in the
jaws of the people.
29 Ye shall utter a song, as in tne night when the feast is
solemnly proclaimed ;
With joy of heart, as when one marcheth to the sound
of the pipe ;
To go to the mountain of Jehovah, to the rock of Israel.
30 And Jehovah shall cause his glorious voice to be
heard.
And the lighting down of his arm to be seen ;
With wrath indignant, and a flame of consuraing fire ;
With a violent storm, and rushing showers, and hail
stones.
31 By the voice of Jehovah the Assyrian shall be beaten
down ;
He, that was ready to smite with his staff,
32 And it shall be, that wherever shall pass the rod of cor
rection,
Which Jehovah shall lay heavily upon him ;
It shall be accompanied with tabrets and harps ;
And vrith fierce battles shall he fight against them,
33 For Tophet is ordained of old ;
Even the same for the king is prepared :
He hath raade it deep ; he hath made it large ;
A fiery pyre, and abundance of fuel ;
And the breath of Jehovah, like a stream of sulphur,
.shall kindle it.

58

ISAIAH. Chap. XXXL

CHAP. 1 Wo unto them, that go down to Egypt for help ;
XXXI. Who trust in horses for their support :
Who confide in chariots, because they are many ;
And in horsemen, because they are very strong :
But look not unto the Holy One of Israel ;
And of Jehovah they ask not counsel,
2 But he in his wisdom will bring evU upon them ;
And he will not set aside his word :
But will rise against the house of the wicked ;
And against the helpers of those that work iniquity,
3 For the Egyptians are man, and not God ;
And their horses are flesh, and not spirit :
And Jehovah shaU stretch forth his hand ;
And the helper shall fall, and the holpen shaU be over
thrown ; s
And together shall all of them be destroyed,
4 For thus hath Jehovah said unto me :
Like as the lion growleth.
Even the young lion, over his prey ;
Though the whole company of shepherds be caUed to
gether against him :
At their voice he wdl not be terrified,
Nor at their tumult will he be humbled :
So shall Jehovah God of Hosts descend to fight
For Mount Sion, and for his own hill.
5 As the raother birds, hovering over their young.
So shall Jehovah God of Hosts protect Jerusalem ;
Protecting, and delivering ; leaping forward, and rescu
ing her.
6 Return unto him, from whom ye have so deeply en
gaged in revolt,
O ye sons of Israel !
7 Verily in that day shall they cast away with contempt,
Every man his idols of silver, and his idols of gold ;
The sin, which their own hands have made.
8 And the Assyrian shall fall by a sword not of man ;
Yea a sword not of mortal shall devour him.
And he shall betake himself to flight from the face of
the sword;
And the courage of his chosen men shall fail.

Chap. XXXL ISAIAH. 59^
9 And through terror he shall pass beyond his strong
hold;
And his princes shall be struck with consternation at his
flight.
Thus saith Jehovah, who hath his fire in Sion,
And his furnace in Jerusalem.
CHAP. 1 Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness;
XXXIL And princes shall rule vrith equity :
2 And the man shall be as a covert from the storm, as a
refuge from the flood;
As canals of waters in a dry place ;
As the shadow of a great rock in a land fainting with
heat:
3 And him the eyes of those, that see, shall regard ;
And the ears of those, that hear, shall hearken.
4 Even the heart of the rash shall consider, and acquire
knowledge;
And the stammering tongue shall .speak readUy and
plainly.
5 The fool shall no longer be called honourable ;
And the niggard shall no more be called Uberal :
6 Foi? the fool vrill stiU utter folly ;
And his heart will devise iniquity :
Practising hypocrisy, and speaking wrongfuUy against
Jehovah ;
To exhaust the soul of the hungry.
And to deprive the thirsty of drink.
7 As for the niggard, his instruments are evU :
He plotteth mischievous derices;
To entangle the humble vrith lying words ;
And to defeat the assertions of the poor in judgment.
8 But the generous wiU derise generous things ;
And he by his generous purposes shaU be estabUshed-
9 O ye women, that sit at ease, arise, hear my voice !
O ye daughters, that dwell in security, give ear unto my
speech 1
10 Years upon j'ears shall ye be disquieted, O ye careless
women :
For the vintage hath failed, the gathering of the fruits
shall not come.

60 ISAIAH. Chap. XXXII.
11 Tremble, O ye that are at ea.se; be ye disquieted, O ye
careless ones !
Strip ye, make ye bare ; and gnd ye sackcloth
12 Upon your loins, upon your'breasts;,
Mourn ye for the pleasant field, for the fruitful vine.
13 Over the land of my people the thorn and the brier
shaU come up;
Yea, over all the joyous houses, over the exulting city.
14 For the palace is deserted, the poptilous city is left deso
late ;
Ophel and the watch-tower shall for a long time be a
den,
A joy of wUd asses, a pasture for the flocks :
15 Till the spirit from on high be poured out upon us;
And the wUderness become a fruitful field ;
And the fruitful field be esteemed a forest :
16 And judgment shall dwell in the vrilderness;
And in the fruitful field shall reside righteousness.
17 And the work of righteousness shall be peace;
And the effect of righteousness perpetual quiet and se
curity.
18 And my people shall dwell in a peaceful mansion,
And in habitations secure,
And in resting places undisturbed.
19 But the hail shall fall, and the forest be brought down;
And the city shall be laid level with the plain.
20 Blessed are ye, who sow your seed in every well-watered
place ;
Who send forth the foot of the ox and the ass.

CHAP. 1 Wo unto tljpe, thou spoiler, who hast hot been spoiled
XXXIII. thyself;
And thou plunderer, who hast not been plundered :
When thou hast ceased to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled;
When thou art weary of plundering, they shall plunder
thee.
2 O Jehovah, have mercy on us ; we have trusted in
thee;
Be thou our strength every morning ;
Even our salvation in the time of distress.

Chap. XXXIIL ISAIAH. 61

3 From thy terrible voice the peoples fled;
When thou didst raise thyself up, the nations were dis
persed,
4 But your spoil shall be gathered, as the locust gathereth ;
As the caterpillar runneth to and fro, so shall they run,
and seize it,
5 Jehovah is exalted ; yea, hd dwelleth on high :
He hath filled Sion with judgment and justice.
6 And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy
times,
The possession df" continued salvation ;
The fear of Jehovah, this shall be thy treasure.
7 Behold the mighty men raise a grievous cry ;
The messengers of peace weep bitterly.
8 The highways are desolate ; the traveller ceaseth :
He hath broken the covenant; he hath rejected the of
fered cities ;
Of raen he raaketh no account.
9 The land raourneth, it languisheth ;
Libanus is put to sharae, it withereth :
Sharon is becorae like a desert ;
And Bashan and Carmel are stripped of their beauty.
10 Now will I arise, saith Jehovah;
Now will I lift myself up on high ; now will I be exalted.
1 1 Ye shall conceive chaff; ye shaU bring forth stubble ;
And my spirit like fire shall consume you.
12 And the peoples shall be burned, as the lime is burned ;
As the thorns are cut up, and consumed in the fire.
13 Hear, O ye that are afar off, my doings;
And acknowledge, O ye that are near, my power,
14 The sinners in Sion are struck with dread;
Terrorjiath seized the hypocrites :
Who among us can abide this consuming fire ?
Who among us can abide these continued burnings ?
15 He who walketh in perfect righteousness, and speaketh
right things ;
Who detesteth the lucre of oppression ;
Who shaketh his hands fi-om bribery ;
Who stoppeth his ears to the proposal of bloodshed ;

62 ISAIAH, Chap, XXXIIL
Who shutteth his eyes against the appearance of evil :
16 His dwelling shall be in the high places ;
The strongholds of the rocks shall be his lofty fortress :
His bread shall be duly furnished ; his waters shall not
fail,
17 Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty;
They shall see thine own land far extended.
18 Thine heart shall reflect on the past terror :
Where is now the _accoraptant ? where the weigher of
tribute ?
Where is he, that nurabered the towers ?
19 Thou shalt see no more that barbarous people;
The people of a deep speech, which thon couldst not
hear;
And of a stamraering tongue, which thou couldst not
understand.
20 Thou shalt see Sion, the city of our solemn feasts ;
Thine eyes shaU behold Jeru.salera,
The quiet habitation, the tabernacle unshaken :
Whose stakes shaU not be plucked up for ever,
And of whose cords none shall be broken.
21 But the glorious name of Jehovah shall be unto us,
A place of confluent streams, of broad rivers ;
Which no oared ship shall pass.
Neither sliaU any mighty vessel go through.
22 For Jehovah is our judge ; Jehovah is our lawgiver ;
Jehovah is our king : he shall save us.
23 Thy sails are loose; they cannot make them fast:
Thy mast is not firm; they cannot spread the ensign.
Then shall a copious spoil be divided;
Even the lame shall seize the prey.
24 Neither shaU the inhabitant say, I am disabled with
sickness :
The people, that dwelleth therein, is freed from the
punishment of their iniquity.

CHAP. 1 Draw near, O ye nations, and hearken ;
XXXIV. A.nd attend unto me, O ye peoples !
Let the earth hear, and the fulness thereof;
The world, and all that spring frora it.

Chap. XXXIV. ISAIAH. 63
2 For the wrath of Jehovah is kindled against all the
nations ;
And his anger against all the orders thereof:
He hath devoted thera ; he hath given thera up to
slaughter.
3 And their slain shall be cast out;
And frora their carcasses their stink shall ascend ;
And the raountains shall melt down -with their blood.
4 And all the host of heaven shall waste away ;
And the heavens shall be roUed up like a scroll :
And all their host shall wither ;
As the withered leaf falleth from the vine, "
And as the blighted fruit from the fig-tree.
5 For my sword is made bare in the heavens :
Behold, on Edom it shall descend;
And on the people jufl;ly by me devoted to destruction.
6 The sword of Jehovah is glutted with blood ;
It is pampered vrith fat : '
With the blood of lambs, and of goats;
With the fat of the reins of raras :
For Jehovah celebrateth a sacrifice in Botsrah,
And a great slaughter in the land of Edora.
7 And the wild goats shall fall down with thera ;
And the buUocks, together with the bulls :
And their own land shall be drunken with their blood,
And their dust shaU be enriched with fat.
8 For it is the day of vengeance to Jehovah ;
The year of recompense to the defender of the cause of
Sion.
9 And her torrents shall be turned into pitch.
And her dust into sulphur ;
And her whole land shall become burning pitch :
10, By night or by day it shall not be extinguished;
For ever shall her sraoke ascend :
From generation to generation she shall lie desert;
To everlasting ages no one shall pass through her ;
1 1 But the pelican and the porcupine shall inherit her ;
And the owl and the raven shaU inhabit there :
And he shall stretch over her the line of devastation,
And the plumraet of eraptiness over her scorched plains.
12 No raore shall they boast the renown of the kingdom;
And all her princes shall utterly fail.

04 iSAIAH. Chap. XXXIV.
13 And in her palaces shall spring up thorns ;
The nettle and the bramble, in her fortresses :
And she shall become an habitation for dragons,
A court for the daughters of the ostrich.
14 And the jackals and the mountain-cats shall meet one
another ;
And the satyr shall call to his fellow :
There also the- screech-owl shaU pitch;
And shall find for herself a place of rest,
15 There shall the night-raven make her nest, and lay her
eggs;
And she shall hatch them, and gather her young under
her shadow :
There also shall the vultures be gathered together ;
Every one of them shaU join her mate.
16 Consult ye the book of JehcJVah, and read :
Not one of these shall be missed ;
Not a female shall lack her mate :
For the mouth of Jehovah hath given the command ;
And his spirit itself hath gathered them,
17 And he hath cast the lot for thera ; >.
And his hand hath raeted out their portion by the line :
They shall possess the land for a perpetual inheritance ;
From generation to generation shall they dwell therein.
CHAP. 1 The desert, and the waste, shall be glad;
XXXV. And the wilderness shall rejoice, and flourish :
2 Like the rose shall it beautifully flourish ;
And the well-watered plain of Jordan shall also rejoice :
The glory of Lebanon shaU be given unto it.
The beauty of Carmel and of Sharon :
These shall behold the glory of Jehovah,
The majesty of our God.
3 Strengthen ye the feeble hands,
And confirm ye the tottering knees.
4 Say ye to the faint-hearted : Be ye strong ;
Fear ye not ; behold your God !
Vengeance will come ; the retribution of God :
He himself will corae, and wdl deliver you.
3 Then shaU be unclosed the eyes of the blind ;
And the ears of the deaf shall be opened :
6 Then shall the lame bound like the hart,
And the tongue of the dumb shall sing ;

Chap. XXXV, ISAIAH. 65
For in the wilderness shall burst forth waters,
And torrents in the desert :
7 And the glowing sand shall become a pool,
And the thirsty soil bubbling springs ;
And in the haunt of dragons shall spring forth
The grass, with the reed, and the bulrush,
8 And a highway shall be there ;
And it shaU be caUed the way of holiness :
No unclean person shall pass through it :
But He himself shall be with them, walking in the way,
And the foolish shaU not err therein,
9 No lion shall be there ;
Nor shall the tyrant of the beasts come up thither :
Neither shall he be found there ;
But the redeemed shall walk in it,
10 Yea the ransomed of Jehovah shall return :
They shall come to Sion vj^ith triumph ;
And perpetual gladness shall crown their heads,
Joy and gladness shaU they obtain ;
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

CHAP. 1 In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Senacherib
XXXVI. king of Assyria came up against all the fenced cities of
2 Judah, and took them. And the king of Assyria sent
^ Rabshakeh, frora Lachish to Jerusalem, to the king
Hezekiah, with a great body of forces : and he presented
himself at the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway
3 that leads to the fuller's field. Then came out unto him
- Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the house
hold, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph,
4 the recorder. And Rabshakeh said unto them ; Say
ye to Hezekiah ; Thus saith the great king, the king of
Assyria : What is this ground of confidence, in which
5 thou confidest? Thou hast said, (but they are vain
words), I have counsel and strength sufficient for the
war. Now in whom dost thou confide, that thou re-
6 bellest against me? Thou certainly confidest in the
support of this broken reed, in Egypt; on which if a
man lean, it will pierce his hand, and go through it :
such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that confide in
7 him. But if ye say to me. We confide in Jehovah our
God ; is it not He, whose high places and whose altars

66 ISAIAH. Chap. XXXVL
Hezekiah hath removed; and hath commanded Judah
8 and Jerusalem to worship only before this altar ? Enter
now, I pray thee, into an engagement with my lord the
king of Assyria; and I wUl give thee two thousand
horses, on condition that thou canst on thy part provide
9 riders for them. How then wUt thou turn back any one
commander, among the least of my lord's servants, ad
vancing against thee ? And trustest thou, that Egypt
10 will supply thee with chariots and with horsemen? And
ara I now come up without Jehovah against this land
to destroy it ? Jehovah hath said unto me, Go thou up
against this land, and destroy it.
11 Then said Eliakim, and Shebna, and Joah, unto
Rabshakeh : Speak, we beseech thee, to thy servants in
the Syrian language, for we understand it ; and speak
not to us in the Jewish language,, in the hearing of the
12 people, who are upon the wall. And Rabshakeh said.
Hath my lord sent me to thy lord and to thee, to speali
these words ? and not to the men, that sit on the wall,
destined to eat their own dung, and drink their own
13 urine, together with you ? Then Rabshakeh stood, and
cried with a loud voice in the Jewish language, and
said : Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of
14 Assyria. Thus saith the king : Let not Hezekiah de-
15 ceive you ; for he vrill not be able to deliver you. And
let not Hezekiah persuade you to trust in Jehovah ;
saying, Jehovah will certainly deliver us; this city
shall not be given up into the hand of the king of
16 Assyria. Hearken not unto Hezekiah; for thus saith
the king of Assyria : Make peace with me, and come
out unto me. And eat ye every one of his own vine,
and every one of his own fig-tree ; and drink ye every
17 one the waters of his own cistern: untU I come and
take you to a land like your own land ; a land of corn
1 8 and of wine, a land of bread and of vineyards. Nor let
. Hezekiah seduce you, saying, Jehovah will deliver us.
Have the gods of the nations delivered each his own
1 9 land from the hand of the king of Assyria ? Where are
the gods of Hamath, and of Arphad? where are the
gods of Sepharvaim ? have they delivered Samaria out
20 of my hand? Who are there among all the, gods of
these lands, that have delivered their own lands out of

Chap. X28XVL ISAIAH. 67
my hand ; that Jehovah should deliver out of my hand
21 Jerusalem ? But the people bfeld their peace, and an
swered him not a word : for the king's command was.
Answer him not,
22 Then came Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was
over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah,
the son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hezekiah, with their
clothes rent ; and reported unto him the words of Rab
shakeh.
CHAP. 1 And when king Hezekiah heard it, he rent his clothes,
XXXVII. and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the
2 house of Jehovah. And he sent Eliakim, who was
over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the
elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah,
3 the son of Amots, the prophet. And they said unto
him: Thus saith Hezekiah; This day is a day of dis
tress, and of rebuke, and of contumely : for the children
are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring
4 forth. O that Jehovah thy God would hear the words
of Rabshakeh, whom his lord the king of Assyria hath
sent to reproach the living God ! and that he would
refute the words, which Jehovah thy God hath heard !
And do thou offer up thy prayer for the poor remains
5 of the people. And the servants of king Hezekiah came
6 to Isaiah. And Isaiah said unto them ; Thus shall ye
say to your lord : Thus saith Jehovah, Be not afraid,
because of the words which thou hast heard, with which
the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
7 Behold, I will infuse a spirit into him ; and he shall
hear a rumour, and return to his own land ; and I will
cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.
B But Rabshakeh returned ; and found the king of
Assyria besieging Libnah : for he had heard, that he
9 had decamped from Lachish, And when Senacherib
had received advice concerning Tirhakah king of Cush,
that he was advancing to give him battle ; he sent mes-
10 sengers again to Hezekiah, saying ; Thus shall ye say
to Hezekiah king of Judah : Let not thy God, in whom
thou confidest, deceive thee ; by assuring thee, that Je
rusalem shall not be given up into the hand of the king
1 1 of Assyria, Thou hast certainly heard, what the kings

68 ISAIAH. CHAP. XXXVIL
of Assyria have done to all lands, which they have ut-
12 terly destroyed : and>»shalt thou be delivered ? Have the
gods of the nations delivered those, which my fathers
have destroyed ? Gozan, and Haran, and Retseph ; and
13 the sons of Eden, which were in Thelassar ? Where is
the king of Hamath, and the king of Arphad, and the
king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Henah, and of Ivah?
14 And Hezekiah received the letters from the hand of
the messengers, and read them ; and he went up to the
house of Jehovah : and Hezekiah spread them before
15 the presence of Jehovah, And Hezekiah prayed be-
16 fore Jehovah, saying: O Jehovah, God of Hosts, thou
God of Israel, who art seated on the cherubim ! Thou
art the God, thou alone, to all the kingdoms of the
earth ! Thou hast made the heavens, and the earth !
17 Incline, O Jehovah, thine ear, and hear ; open, O Je
hovah, thine eyes, and see : yea, hear all the words of
Senacherib, which he hath sent to reproach the liring
18 God, In truth, O Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have
destroyed all the nations, and their lands ; and have
19 cast their gods into the fire : for they were not gods,
but the work of the hands of man, wood and stone;
20 therefore they have destroyed them. And now, O Je
hovah, our God, save us, we beseech thee, from his
hand ; that all the kingdoms of the earth may know,
that thou Jehovah art the only God,
21 Then Isaiah the son of Amots sent unto Hezekiah,
saying : Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel : Thy
prayer unto me, concerning Senacherib king of Assyria,
22 I have heard. This is the word, which Jehovah hath
spoken concerning him :
The virgin daughter of Sion hath despised thee,
she hath laughed thee to scorn ;
The daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head be
hind thee,
23 Whom hast thou reproached, and reviled ; and against
whom hast thou exalted thy voice ?
And hast lifted up thine eyes on high? Even against
the Holy One of Israel,

Chap. XXXVII. ISAIAH. 69
24 By thy messengers hast thou reproached Jehovah,
and said :
By the multitude of my chariots haye I ascended
The highth of the mountains, the sides of Lebanon ;
And I will cut down his tallest cedars, his choicest fir-
trees ;
And I will penetrate into his extreme retreats, his
richest forests,
25 I have digged, and I have drunk strange waters;
And I have dried up with the sole of my feet all the
canals of fenced places,
26 - Hast thou not heard, of old, that I have disposed it ?
And, of ancient times, that I have formed it ?
Now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldst be
to lay waste
Warlike nations, strong-fenced cities.
27 Therefore were their inhabitants of smaU strength;
they were dismayed and confounded :
They were as the grass of the field, and as the green
herb;
The grass of the house-top ; and as the corn blasted
before it groweth up,
28 But thy sitting down, and thy going out, and thy
coming in,
And thy rage against me, I have known,
29 Because thy rage against me, and thy insolence, is
come up into mine ears;
Therefore wUl I put my hook in thy nose, and my
bridle in thy jaws ;
And I will turn thee back by the way in which thou
caraest,
30 And this shall be a sign unto thee :
Eat this year that which groweth of itself;
And the second year, that which springeth up of the
same;
, And in the third year sow ye, and reap ; v-^
And plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof,
31 And again shall the escaped, the remnant of the house
of Judah,
Strike root downward, and bear fruit upward.
For from Jerusalem shaU go forth the remnant ;
And the part escaped from Mount Sion :
The zeal of Jehovah God of Hosts shall effect this.

70 ISAIAH. Chap. XXXVII.
32 Therefore thus saith Jehovah concerning die kipg of
Assyria :
He shall not enter into this city ;
Nor shall he shoot an arrow there ;
Nor shall he present a shield before it ;
Nor shall he cast up a mound against it.
33 By the way, in which he came, by the same shall he
return ;
And into this city shaU he not come ; saith Jehovah.
34 And I will protect this city to deUver it ;
For mine own sake, and for the sake of David my
servant,
35 And the angel of Jehovah went forth, and smote in
the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and fourscore and
five thousand men : and when the people arose early in
36 the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. Then
Senacherib king of Assyria decamped, and departed, and
37 returned ; and dwelt at Nineveh. . And as he was wor
shipping in the temple of Nisroc his god, Adramelec and
Sharetser, his sons, smote him with the sword : and they
escaped into the land of Armenia ; and Esarhaddon his
son reigned in his stead.

CHAP. 1 At that time Hezekiah was seized with a mortal sick-
XXXVIII. ness : and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amots, came
unto him; and said unto him: Thus saith Jehovah:
Give orders concerning the affairs of thy faraUy; for
2 thou must die ; thou shalt no longer live. Then Heze
kiah turned his face to the wall ; and made his suppli-
3 cation to Jehovah. And he said : I beseech thee, 0
Jehovah, remember now, how I have endeavoured to
walk before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart; and
have done that which is good in thine eyes. And He-
4 zekiah wept, and lamented grievously. Now [before
Isaiah was gone out into the middle court], the word of
Jehovah came unto him, saying : Go [back], and say
5 unto Hezekiah : Thus saith Jehovah, the God of David
thy father : I have heard thy supplication ; I have seen
thy tears. Behold [I wiU heal thee; and on the third
day thou shalt go up into the house of Jehovah. And]
6 I will add unto thy days fifteen years. And I will de-

Chap. XXXVIll. ISAIAH. 71
liver thee, and this city, from the hand of the king of
22 Assyria; and I wUl protect this city. And [Hezekiah
said : By what sign shall I know, that I shall go up into
7 the house of Jehovah ? And Isaiah said :] This shall
be the sign* unto thee- from Jehovah, that Jehovah will
8 bring to effect this word which he hath spoken. Behold,
I will bring back the shadow of the degrees, by which
the sun is gone down on the degrees of Ahaz, ten de
grees backward. And the sun returned backward ten
degrees, on the degrees by which it had gone down,
21 And Isaiah said : Let thera take a lump of figs : and they
bruised them, and applied them to the boil ; and he re
covered,
9 The writing of hezekiah king of judah, when
he had been sick, and was recovered from his
sickness,
10 I said, when my days were just going to be cut off,
I shall pass through the gates of the grave ;
I am deprived of the residue of my years !
11 I said, I shall no more see Jehovah in the land of
the hving !
I shaU no longer behold man, with the inhabitants of
the world !
12 My habitation is taken away, and is removed from
me, like a shepherd's tent :
My life is cut off, as by the weaver ; he will sever me
from the loom ;
In the course of the day thou wUt finish my web,
13 I roared until the morning, like the lion ;
So did he break to pieces all my bones,
14 Like the Swallow, like the crane, did I twitter ;
I made a raoaning like the dove.
Mine eyes fail with looking upward :
O Lord, contend thou for me ; be thou my surety,
15 What shall I say? he hath given rae a promise, and
he hath performed it.
Through the rest of my years will I reflect on this
bitterness of my soul,
16 For this cause shall it be declared, O Jehovah, con
cerning thee,
That thou hast revived my spirit ;

72 ISAIAH. CHAP. XXXVIIL
That thou hast restored my healtli, and prolonged my
life,
17 Behold, my anguish is changed into ease !
Thou hast rescued my soul from perdition ;
Yea thou hast cast behind thy back aU my sins,
18 Verily the grave shaU not give thanks unto thee;
death shaU not praise thee ;
They that go down into the pit shaU not await thy
truth :
19 The hving, , the living, he shall praise thee, as I do
this day ;
The father to the children shaU make known thy faith
fulness.
20 Jehovah was present to save me : therefore wiU we
sing our songs to the harp,
All the days of our life, in the house of Jehovah.

CHAP. 1 At that time Merodach Baladan, the son of Baladan
XXXIX. ]^jjjg (jf Babylon, sent letters, and ambassadors, and a
present to Hezekiah ; for he had heard that he had been
2 sick, and was recovered. And Hezekiah was rejoiced
at their arrival: and he shewed them his magazines, the
silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious
ointment, and his whole arsenal, and all that was con
tained in his treasures : there was not. any thing in his
house, and in all his dominion, that Hezekiah did not
shew them.
3 And Isaiah the prophet came unto king Hezekiah,
and said unto him : What say these men ? and from
whence came they unto thee ? And Hezekiah said : They
are come to me from a distant country ; from Babylon.
4 And he said : What have they seen in thy house ? And
Hezekiah said: They have seen every thing in my
house : there is nothing in my treasures, which I have
5 not shewn them. And Isaiah .said unto Hezekiah:
Heai- thou the word of Jehovah God of Hosts.
6 Behold, the day shall come, when all that is in thy
house, and that thy fatliers have treasured up unto this
day, shall be carried away to Babylon : there shall not
7 any thing be left, saith Jehovah. And of thy sons,
which shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall
they take : and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of

CHAP. XXXIX. ISAIAH. 73
3 the king of Babylon. And Hezekiah said unto Isaiah :
Gracious is the word of Jehovah, which thou hast de
livered ! For, added he, there shall be peace, according
to his faithful proraise, in my days.

CHAP. 1 Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God :
^I'- 2 Speak ye animating words to Jerusalem, and declare
unto her.
That her warfare is fulfilled ; that the expiation of her
iniquity is accepted;
That she shall receive at the liand of Jehovah
[Blessings] double to the punishment of aU her sins.
3 A voice crieth : In the wilderness prepare ye the way
of Jehovah !
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God !
4 Every vaUey shaU be exalted, and every mountain and
hill be brought low ;
And the crooked shall become straight, and the rough
places a smooth plain :
3 And the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed ;
And all fljesh shall see together the salvation of our God :
For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it.
6 A voice sayeth : Proclaim ! And I said. What shall
I proclaim ?
All flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of the
field:
7 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth ;
When the wind of Je^hovah bloweth upon it.
VerUy this people is 'grass.
8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth ;
But uie word of our God shall stand for ever.'
9 Get thee up upon a high raountain, O daughter that
bringest glad tidings to Sion :
Exalt thy voice with strength, O daughter that bringest
glad tidings to Jerusalem.
Exalt it ; be not afraid :
Say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God !
10 Behold, the Lord Jehovah shall corae against the
strong one,
And his arm shall prevail over him.

74 ISAIAH. Chap. XL.
Behold, his reward is with him, and the recompeisse of
his work before him.
1 1 Like a shepherd shall he feed his flock ;
In his arm shaU he gather wp the lambs.
And shall bear them in his bosom ; the nursing ewes
shall he gently lead.
12 Who hath measured the waters in the holksw of his
hand;
And hath meted out the heavens by his span ;
And hath comprehended the dust ©Ithe earth in a tierce;
And hath vreighed in scales the monntaiios, and the hiUs
in a baliance ?
13 Who hath directed the spirit of Jehovah ;
And, as one of his couneU, hath informed him ?
14 Whom hath he consulted, that he should instruct him,
And teach him the path of judgmeiat ;
That he should impart to him science.
And inform him in the way of understanding ?
15 Behold, the nations are as a drop from the bucket;
As the smaU dust of the balance shall they be accounted :
Behold^ the idands he taketh up as an atom.
16 And Lebanon is not sufficient for the fiire;
Nor his beasts sufficient for the burnt-offering;
17 All the nations are as nothing before him ;
They are esteemed by him as less than nought, and
vanity,
18 To whom therefore wUl ye liken God?
And what is the model of resemblance, that ye will pre
pare for him ?
19 The workman casteth an image ;
And the smith overlayeth it with plates of gold);
And forgeth for it chains of silver,
20 He that cannot afford a costly oblation, ehiSMiiseth a piece
of wood that will not rot;
He procureth a skilful artist.
To erect an iraage, which shall not be movedL
21 Will ye not know ? will ye not hear ?
Haith i(t not been declared to you from the beginning ?
Have ye not understood it from the foundations of the
earth ?
22 It is He, that sitteth on the circle of the earth ;

CHAf. XL. ISAIAH. 75
And the inhabitants are to him as grasshoppers :
That extendeth the heavens, as a thin veil ;
And spreadeth them out, as a tent to dwell in :
23 That redneeth princes to nothing ;
That maketh the judges of the earth a mere inanity,
24 Yea they shall not leave a plant behind them, they shall
not be sown,
Their trunk shaU not spread its root in the grotind :
If he but blow upon them, they instantly wither ;
And the whirlwind shall bear them aWay Uke the stubble,
25 To whom then wUl ye liken me ?
And to whom shall I be equaUed ? saith the Holy One,
26 Lift up yotflr eyes on high ;
And see,- who hath created these.
He draweth forth their armies by number ;
He caUeth them aU by name :
Through the greatness of his strength, and the mighti
ness of his power,
Not one of them faileth to appear.
27 Wherefore sayest thou then, O Jacob,
And why speakest thou thus, O Israel,
My way is hidden- from Jehovah,
And my cause passeth unregarded by my God.
28 Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard.
That Jehovah is the everlasting God,
The Creator of the bounds of the eairth ?
That he neither fainteth, nor is wearied ;
And that his understanding is unsearchable !
29 He giveth strength to' the faint,
And to the infirm he multiplieth force.
30 The young men shall faint and be wearied ;
And the chosen youths shall stumble and fall :
31 But they that trust in Jehovah shall gather new
strength ;
They shall put forth fresh feathers like the moulting
eagle :
They shall run, and not be wearied ;
They shall march onward, and shall not faint,
CHAP, 1 Let the distant nations repair to me with new force
XLL of mind ;
And let the peoples recover their strength.

76 ISAIAH, Chap. XLI.
Let them draw near ; then let them speak ;
Let us enter into solemn debate together,
2 Who hath raised up the righteous man from the
east;
Hath called him to attend his steps ?
Hath subdued nations at his presence ;
And given him dominion over kings ?
Hath made them like the dust before his sword ;
And like the driven stubble before his bow ?
3 He pursueth them; he passeth in safety;
By a way never trodden before vrith his feet.
4 Who hath performed, and made these things,
Calling' the several generations from the begiiming?
I Jehovah, the first ;
And with the last, I am the same.
5 The distant nations saw, and they were afraid ;
The remotest parts of the earth, and they were terrified.
They drew near, they came together ;
6 Every one assisted his neighbour,
And said to his brother, Be of good courage.
7 The carver encourageth the smith ;
He that smootheth vrith the hammer, him that smiteth
on the anvil;
Saying of the solder, It is good ;
And he fixeth the idol with nails, that it shall not move.
8 But thou, Israel, my servant;
Thou, Jacob, whom I have chosen ;
The seed of Abraham my friend :
9 Thou, whom I have led by the hand from the ends iii
the earth;
And called from the extremities thereof;
And I said unto thee. Thou art my servant;
I have chosen thee, and will not reject thee ;
10 Fear not, for I am with thee;
Be not dismayed, for I am thy God.
I have strengthened thee, I have assisted thee ;
I have even supported thee with my faithful right hand,
1 1 Behold, they, that were enraged against thee, shall be .
ashamed and confounded ;

Chap. XLI. ISAIAH. 77
They, that contended with thee, shall become as nothing,
and shall utterly perish,
12 Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even the
men that strove with thee :
They shall become as nothing, and as mere nought,
even the men that opposed thee in battle,
13 For I am Jehovah thy God, that hold thee fast by thy
right hand ;
That say unto thee. Fear not ; I am thy helper,
14 Fear not, thou worm Jacob ; ye mortals of Israel :
I am thy helper, saith Jehovah ;
And thine avenger is the Holy One of Israel,
15 Behold, I have made thee a thrashing wain;
A new corn-drag armed with pointed teeth :
Thou shalt thrash the mountains, and beat them small ;
And reduce the hUls to chaff:
16 Thou shalt winnow them, and the wind shall bear thera
away ;
And the tempest shall scatter them abroad :
But thou shalt rejoice in Jehovah ;
In the Holy One of Israel shalt thou triumph,
17 The poor and the needy seek for water, and there is
'none ;
Their tongue is parched with thirst:
I Jehovah wiU answer them ;
The God of Israel, I will not forsake thera,
18 I will open in the high places rivers;
And in the midst of the vallies, fountains :
I will make the desert a standing pool ;
And the dry ground streams of waters,
19 In the wilderness I will give the cedar;
The acacia, the myrtle, and the tree producing oil :
I will plant the fir-tree in the desert ;
The pine, and the box together :
20 That they may see, and that they may know ;
And may consider, and understand at once,
That the hand of Jehovah hath done this,
And that the Holy One of Israel hath created it, «
21 Draw near, produce your cause, saith Jehovah :
Produce these your mighty powers, saith the king of
Jacob.

78 ISAIAH. Chap. XLL
22 Let them approach, and teU us the things that shall
happen :
The things that shall first happen, what they are, let
thera tell us ;
And we will consider them ; and we shaU know the event.
Or declare to us things to come hereafter :
23 Tell us the things, that will come to pass in later times;
Then shall we know that ye are Gods,
Yea, do good, or do evil ;
Then shall we be struck at once with admiration and
terror,
24 But, behold, ye are less than nothing;
And your operation is less than nought :
Abhorred be the man that chooseth you !
25 I have raised up one from the north, and he shaU
come ;
From the rising of the sun he shall invoke my name :
And he shall trample on princes, like the mortar ;
Even as the potter treadeth down the clay.
26 Who hath declared this from the beginning, that we
should know it ?
And beforehand, that we might say. The prediction is
true?
There was not one, that foretold it; not one, that de
clared it ;
There was not one, that heard your words :
27 I first to Sion [give the word]. Behold they are here ;
And. to Jerusalem I give the messenger of glad tidings.
28 But I looked, and there was no man ;
And among the idols, and there was no one that gave
warning ;
29 And, I inquired of thera, and [there was no om] that
could return an answer.
Behold, they are all of them vanity^; their vrorks are
nought :
Mere wind and emptiness are their molten images>.

CHAP, 1 Behold my servant, whom I will uphold ;
XLII. My chosen, in whom my soul deUghteth :
I will make my spirit rest upon him ;
And he shall publish judgment to the nations.

Chap, XLIL ISAIAH. 79
2 He shaU not cry aloud, nor raise a clamour.
Nor cause bis voice to be heard in the public places :
3 The bruised reed he shall not break ;
And the dimly burning flax he shall not quench :
He shall pubUsh judgment, so as to establish it per
fectly.
4 His force shaU not be abated,, nor broken ;
Until he hath firmly seated judgraent in the earth :
And the distant natjons shall earnestly wait for his law,
5 Thus saith the God, even Jehovah,
Who created the heavens, and stretched them out ;
Who ^read abroad the earth, and the produce thereof;
Who giveth breath to the people upon it.
And spirit to them that treaid thereon :
6 I Jehovah have caUed thee for a righteous purpose ;
And I wdl take hold of thy hand, and wUl preserve
thee;
And I wiU give thee for a covenant to the people, for a
light to the nations :
7 To open the eyes of the blind ;
To bring the captive out of confinement ;
And from the dungeon, those that dweU in darkness,
8 I am Jehovah, that is my name ;
And my glory will I not give to another,
Nor my praise to the graven iraages.
9 The former predictions, lo ! they are come to pass;
And new events I now declare r
Before they spring forth, I make them known unto you,
10 Sing unto Jehovah a new song;
His praise, from the eads of the earth:
Ye that go down upon the sea, and aU that. fiU it ;
Ye distant seat-coasts, and: ye that dwell therein :
11 Let the desert cry aloud, and the cities thereof;
The vUlages, and they that dwell in Kedar :;
Let the inhabitants of the rocky country utter a joyfiil
sound.;
Let them shouib aloud from the top of the mountains :
12 Let them ascribe glory to Jehovah ;
And araong the distant nations raake known his praise,
13 Jehovah shall march forth like a hero;
Like a mighty warrior shall he rouse his vengeance :

80

ISAIAH, Chap. XLIL

He shaU cry aloud ; he shaU shout amain ;
He shaU exert his strength against his enemies.
14 I have long holden my peace; shaU I keep silence for
ever?
Shall I StUl contain myself? I wiU cry out like a woman
in travail;
Breathing short, and drawing in my breath with vio
lence,
15 I wiU make barren the mountains and hiUs;
And burn up aU the grass, that is upon them :
I will mdke the rivers dry deserts ;
And scorch up the pools of water,
16 I wiU lead the blind in a way, which they have not
known ;
And through paths, which they have not known, wUl I
make them go :
I will turn darkness into light before them ;
And the rugged ways into a smooth plain.
These things wUl I do for them, and wUl not forsake
thera,
17 They are turned backward, they are utterly confound
ed, who trust in the graven image ;
Who say unto the molten image. Ye are our gods !
18 Hear, O ye deaf;
And, ye blind, look attentively, that ye may see !
19 Who is blind, but my servant ;
And deaf, as he to whom I have sent my messengers ?
Who is blind, as he who is perfectly instructed ;
And deaf, as the servant of Jehovah ?
20 Thou hast seen indeed, yet thou dost not regard j
Thine ears are open, yet thou wUt not hear,
21 Yet Jehovah was gracious unto him, for his truth's
sake:
He hath exalted his own praise, and made it glorious,
22 But this is a people spoUed and plundered :
All their chosen youths are taken in the toils,
And are plunged in the dark dungeons :
They are become a spoU, and there was none to rescue
thera;
A plunder, and no one said. Restore,

Chap. XLIL ISAIAH. 81
23 Who is there among you, that will listen to this ;
That will hearken, and attend to it, for the future ?
24 Who hath given Jacob for a spoil ;
And Israel to the plunderers ?
Was it not Jehovah; He, against whom they have
sinned ;
In whose ways they would not walk ;
And whose law they would not obey ?
25 Therefore poured he out upon them the heat of his
wrath, and the violence of war :
And it kindled a flame round about him, yet he did not
regard it ;
And it .set him on fire, yet he did not consider it.
CHAP. 1 Yet now, thus saith Jehovah ;
XLIII. Who created thee, O Jacob ; and who formed thee, O
Israel :
Fear thou not, for I have redeemed thee ;
• I have called thee by thy name ; thou art mine.
2 When thou passest through waters, I ara with thee ;
And through rivers, they shall not overwhelm thee :
When thou walkest in the fire, thou shalt not be
scorched ;
And the flame shall not take hold of thee.
3 For I am Jehovah, thy God ;
The Holy One of Israel, thy redeemer :
1 have given Egypt for thy ransom ;
Cush, and Saba, in thy stead.
4 Because thou hast been precious in my sight,
Thou hast been honoured, and I have loved thee :
Therefore will I give men instead of thee ;
And peoples instead of thy soul.
5 Fear thou not, for I am with thee :
From the east I will bring thy children.
And from the west I will gather thee together :
6 I will say to the north. Give up ;
And to the south. Withhold not ;
Bring my sons frora afar ;
And my daughters from the ends of the earth ;
7 Every one that is called by my name.
Whom for my glory I have created ;
Whom I have formed, yea whom I have made.

82

ISAIAH. Chap. XLIIL

8 Bring forth the people, blind, although they have
eyes;
And deaf, although they have ears.
9 Let all the nations be gathiered together,
And let the peoples be coUected.
Who among them will declare this;
And wdl tell us, what first shall come to pass ?
Let them produce their witnesses, that they may be jus
tified :
Or let them hear in their turn, and say, This is true.
10 Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah;
Even my servant, whom I have chosen :
That ye may know, and believe me ;
And understand, that I am He.
Before me no god was formed ;
And after me none shall exist.
Ill, even I, am Jehovah ;
And beside me there is no saviour.
12 I declared my purpose, and I have saved :
I made it known ; nor was it any strange god among
you:
And ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, that I am
God.
13 Even before time was, -I am He;
And there is none that can rescue out of my hand :
I work ; and who shall undo what I have done ?
1 4 Thus saith Jehovah,
Your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
For your sake have I sent unto Babylon ;
And I wUl bring down aU her strong bars ;
And the Chaldeans, exulting in their ships :
15 I am Jehovah, your Holy One ;
The creator of Israel, your king.
16 Thus saith Jehovah ;
Who made a way in the sea.
And a path in the mighty waters ;
17 Who brought forth the rider and the horse, the army
and the warrior;
Together they lay down, they rose no mpre ;
They were extinguished, they were quenched like tow :

Chap. XLIII. ISAIAH. 83
18 Remember not the former things;
And the things of ancient times regard not ;
19 Behold, I make a new thing;
Even now shaU it spring forth : wiU ye not regard it ?
Yea I will make in the wUderness a way ;
In the desert, streams of water.
' 20 The vrild beast of the field shall glorify me ;
The dragons, and the daughters of the ostrich :
Because I have given waters in the wilderness;
And fiowing streams in the desert ;
To give drink to my people, my chosen :
21 This people, whom I have formed for myself;
Who shall recount my praise.
22 But thou hast not invoked me, O Jacob;
Neither on my account hast thou laboured, O Israel.
23 Thou hast not brought to me the lamb of thy burnt-
offering ;
Neither hast thou honoured me with thy sacrifices :
I have not burthened thee with exacting oblations ;
Nor wearied thee with demands of frankincense :
24 Thou hast not purchased for me with sUver the aroma
tic reed ;
Neither hast thou satiated rae with the fat of thy sacri
fices.
On the contrary, thou hast burthened rae with thy sins ;
Thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities,
25 I, even I, am He;
I blot out thy transgressions for mine own sake ;
And thy sins I will not remember,
26 Remind nie of thy»=plea: let us be judged on equal
terins:
Set forth thine own cause, that thou mayest clear thy
self,
27 Thy chief leader hath sinned ;
And thy public teachers have revolted from me ;
28 And thy princes have profaned my sanctuary:
Therefore wUl T give up Jacob for a devoted thing.
And Israel to reproach,
CHAP. 1 But hear now, O Jacob, my servant ;
XLIV. And Israel, whom I have chosen :
2 Thus saith Jehovah, thy maker ;

84 ISAIAH. Chap. XLIV.
And he that formed thee from the womb, and wdl help
thee:
Fear thou not, O my servant Jacob ;
And, O Jeshurun, whom I have chosen :
3 For I will pour out waters on the thirsty ;
And flowing streams on the dry ground :
I wUl pour out my spirit on thy seed ;
And my blessing on thine offspring,
4 And they shaU spring up as the grass among the waters ;
As the willows beside the aqueducts.
5 One shaU say; I belong to Jehovah;
And another shall be called by the name of Jacob :
And this shall inscribe his hand to Jehovah ;
And shall be surnamed by the name of Israel.
6 Thus saith Jehovah, the king of Israel ;
And his redeemer, Jehovah God of Hosts :
I am the first, and, I am the last ;
And beside me there is no God.
7 And who is like me, that he shoidd call forth this eveilt,
And make it known beforehand, and dispose it for me,
From the time that I appointed the people of the des
tined age ?
The things that are now coraing, and are to come here
after, let them declare unto us.
8 Fear ye not, neither be ye afraid :
Have I not declared it unto you from the first ?
Yea, I have foreshewn it ; and ye are my witnesses.
Is there a God beside me ?
Yea, there is no other sure protector ; I know not any,
9 They that form the graven iraage are all of them vanity;
And their most curious works shall not profit.
Yea, their works themselves bear witness to them,
That they see not, and that they understand not :
10 That every one may be ashamed, that he hath formed
a god,
And cast a graven image, that profiteth not,
1 1 Behold, all his associates shall be ashamed ;
Even the workmen theraselves shall blush :
They shall asserable all of thera; they shall present
themselves ; '
They shaU fear, and be ashamed together.

Chap. XLIV. ISAIAH. 85
12 The smith cutteth off a portion of iron :
He worketh it in the coals, and with haramers he form-
eth it ;
And he exerteth upon it the force of his arm.
Yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth him ;
He drinketh no water, and he is faint,
13 The carpenter stretcheth his line;
He raarketh out the form of it vrith red ochre :
He worketh it with the sharp tool ;
He figureth it with the compass :
He maketh it according to the fashion of a man ;
According to the beauty of the human form, that it may
abide in the house,
14 He heweth down cedars for his use :
And he taketh the pine, and the oak ; ,
And layeth in good store of the trees of the forest.
He planteth the ash, and the rain nourisheth it ;
15 That it may be for the use of man, for fuel :
And he taketh thereof, and warmeth hiraself;
Yea he heateth the oven with it, and baketh bread :
He also forraeth a god, and worshippeth it :
He maketh of it a graven image, and boweth down unto
it,
16 Part of it he burneth in the fire;
And with part of it he dresseth flesh, and eatetli :
He roasteth meat, and his hunger is satisfied ;
He also warmeth himself, and sayeth.
Aha ! I am warmed, I have enjoyed the fire :
17 And the remamder thereof he maketh a god, even his
graven image ;
He boweth down to it, and worshippeth it :
And he prayeth unto it, and sayeth ;
Deliver me, for thou art my God !
18 They know not, neither do they understand:
Verily their eyes are closed up, that they cannot see ;
And their heart, that they cannot rightly discern :
19 Neither doth he consider in his heart;
Neither hath he knowledge, nor understanding, to say :
Part of it I have burned in the fire ;
I have also baked bread on the coals thereof;
I have roasted flesh, and I have eaten :
And .shall I raake the reranant an abomination ?
K

gg ISAIAH. Chap. XLIV.
ShaU I bow myself down to the stock of a tree ?
20 He feedeth on ashes ; a deluded heart leadeth him aside ;
So that he cannot deliver his own soul, nor say,
Is there not a lie in my right hand ?
21 Remember these things, O Jacob ;
And, Israel ; for thou aft ray servant :
I have forraed thee ; thou art a servant unto me ;
O Israel, by me thou shalt not be forgotten,
22 I have raade thy transgressions vanish away like a cloud;
And thy sins like a vapour :
Return unto me ; for I have redeemed thee,
23 Sing, O ye heavens, for Jehovah hath effected it;
Utter a joyful sound, O ye depths of the earth :
Burst forth into song, O ye mountains ;
Thou, forest, and every tree therein !
For Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob ;
And will be glorified in Israel,
24 Thus saith Jehovah, thy redeemer ;
Even he, that formed thee from the womb :
I am Jehovah, who make all things ;
Who stretch out the heavens alone ;
Who spread the firm earth by myself:
25 I am he, who frustrateth the prognostics of the impos
tors;
And maketh the diviners mad :
Who reverseth the devices of the sages.
And infatuateth their knowledge :
26 Who establisheth the word of his servant;
And accomplisheth the counsel of his messengers :
Wlio sayeth to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited ;
And to the cities of Judah, Ye shalt be built ;
And her desolated places I vrill restore :
27 Who sayeth to the deep, Be thou wasted ;
And I will make dry thy rivers :
28 Who sayeth to Cyrus, Thou art my shepherd !
And he shall fulfil all my pleasure :
Who sayeth to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built ;
And to the temple, Thy foundations shall be laid ;

Chap. XLV. ISAIAH. 87
CHAP. 1 Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed ;
XLV. ijiq Cyrus, whom I hold fast by the right hand :
That I may subdue nations before him ;
And ungird the loins of kings :
That I may open before him the valves ;
And the gates shall not be shut,
2 I wUl go before thee ;
And make the raountains level :
The valves of brass vrill I break in sunder ;
And the bars of iron wUl I hew down,
3 And I will give unto thee the treasures of darkness.
And the stores deep hidden in secret places :
That thou mayest know, that I ara Jehovah ;
He that calleth thee by thy name, the God of Israel,
4 For the sake of my servant Jacob ;
And of Israel, my chosen ;
I have even called thee by thy name ;
I have surnaraed thee, though thou knowest me not,
5 I am Jehovah, and none else ;
Beside me there is no God :
I vrill gird thee, though thou hast not known me,
6 That they may know, from the rising of the sun,
And from the west, that there is none beside me :
I ara Jehovah, and none else ;
7 Forming light, and creating darkness ;
Making peace, and creating evil :
I Jehovah am the author of all these things,
8 Drop down, O ye heavens, the dew from above ;
And let the clouds shower down righteousness :
Let the earth open her bosom, and let salvation pro
duce her fruit ;
And let justice push forth her bud together :
I Jehovah have created it,
9 Wo unto him, that contendeth with the power that
formed hira ;
The potsherd with the raoulder of the clay !
Shall the clay say to the potter. What makest thou ?
And to the workman. Thou hast no hands ?
10 Wo unto him that sayeth to his father, What begettest
thou?
And to his mother. What dost thou bring forth ?

88 ISAIAH. Chap. XLV.
11 Thus saith Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel;
And he that formeth the things, which are to come :
Do ye question me concerning my children ?
And do ye give me directions concerning the works of
my hands ?
12 I have made the earth;
And man upon it I have created :
My hands have stretched out the heavens ;
And to aU the host of them I have given command r
l3 I have raised him up in righteousness ;
And I wUl make level all his ways.
He shall buUd my city, and release my captives;
Not for price, nor for reward :
Saith Jehovah God of Hosts,
14 Thus saith Jehovah :
The wealth of Egypt, and the merchandise of Cush,
And the Sabeans tall of stature.
Shall come over to thee, and shaU be thine :
They shall follow thee ; in chains shall they pass along ;
They shall bow down to thee, and in suppliant guise
address thee :
In thee alone is God ;
And there is no God besides whatever,
15 VerUy, thou art a God that hidest thy counsels,
O God of Israel, the saviour !
16 They are ashamed, they are even confounded, his
adversaries, all of thera ;
Together they retire in confusion, the fabricators of
iraages,
17 But Israel shall be saved -in Jehovah with eternal sal
vation :
Ye shaU not be asharaed, neither shaU ye be confounded,
to the ages of eternity.
18 For thus saith Jehovah,
Who created the heavens ; he is God :
Wlio formed the earth and made it; he hath established
it:
He created it not in vain ; for he formed it to be inha
bited :

Chap. XLV. ISAIAH. 89
I am Jehovah, and none besides :
19 1 have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth ;
I have not said to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain :
I am Jehovah, who speak truth; who give direct
answers.
20 Assemble yourselves together, and come ;
Gather yourselves together, ye that are escaped from
among the nations.
They know nothing, that carry about the wood, which
they have carved; .
That address themselves in prayer to a god, which can
not save.
21 Publish it abroad, and bring them near; and let them
consult together :
Wlio hath made this known long before, hath declared
it frora the first ?
Is it not I Jehovah, than whom there is no other God ?
A God, that uttereth truth, and granteth salvation ; there
is none beside me ?
22 Look unto me, and be saved, O aU ye remote people of
the earth;
For I am God, and there is none else.
23 By myself have I sworn ; truth is gone forth frora my
mouth ;
The word, and it shall not be revoked :
Surely to me shall every knee bow, shall every tongue
swear :
24 Saying, Only to Jehovah belongeth salvation and power :
To hira they shall come ; they shall be ashamed, all that
are incensed against hira :
25 In Jehovah shall be justified, and make their boast, all
the seed of Israel.
CHAP. 1 Bel boweth down, Nebo croucheth ;
XLVI. Their idols are laid on the beasts and the cattle;
Their burthens are heavy, a grievous weight to the weary
beast,
2 They crouched, they bowed down together :
They could not deliver their own charge ;
Even they themselves are gone into captivity,
3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob ;
And all ye the remnant of the house of Israel ;

90

ISAIAH, Chap. XLVI.

Ye that have been borne by me from the birth ;
That have been carried from the womb.
4 And even to your old age, I am the same ;
And even to your grey hairs, I wUl carry you,
I have made, and I wUl bear;
I wiU carry, and will deliver you,
5 To whom wiU ye liken me, and equal me ?
And to whom wiU ye compare me, that we may be like ?
6 Ye that lavish gold out of the bag;
And that -weigh silver in the balance ?
They hire a goldsmith, and he maketh it a god :
They worship him ; yea they prostrate themselves before
him,
7 They bear him on the shoulder; they carry him about;
They set him down in his place, and he standeth :
From his place he shaU not remove ;
To him that crieth unto him, he vrill not answer;
Neither will he deliver him from his distress,
8 Remember this, and shew yourselves men :
Reflect on it deeply, O ye apostates,
9 Remember the former things, of old time :
Verily I am God, and none else ;
I am God, nor is there any thing like me.
10 From the beginning making known the end;
And from early times, the things that are not yet done :
Saying, My counsel shall stand ;
And whatever I have wiUed, I wUl effect.
1 1 Calling from the east the eagle ;
And from a land far distant, the man of my counsel :
As I have spoken, so will I bring it to pass ;
I have formed the design, and I wUl execute it.
12 Hearken unto me, O ye stubborn of heart;
Ye that are far distant from deliverance :
13 1 bring my promised deliverance near, it shaU not be far
distant ;
And my salvation shall not be delayed.
And I vrill give in Sion salvation ;
To Israel I will give my glory.

Chap. XLVII. ISAIAH, 91

CHAP. 1 Descend, and sit on the dust, O virgin daughter of
XLVIL Babylon;
Sit on the bare ground without a throne, O daughter of
the Chaldeans:
For thou shalt no longer be, caUed the tender, and the
delicate.
2 Take the mill, and grind the corn :
Uncover thy locks, disclose thy flowing hair ;
Make bare thy leg ; wade through the rivers.
3 Thy nakedness shall be uncovered ; even thy shame shall
be seen :
I wiU take full vengeance ; neither wdl I suffer man to
intercede with me.
4 Our avenger, Jehovah God of Hosts,
The Holy One of Israel, is his narae !
5 Sit thou in silence, go into darkness, O daughter of
the Chaldeans ;
For thou shalt no longer be caUed the lady of the king
doms.
6 I was angry with my people ; I profaned my heritage ;
And I gave thera up into thy hand :
Thou didst not shew mercy unto them ;
Even upon the aged didst thou greatly aggravate the
weight of thy yoke.
7 And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever :
Because thou didst not attentively consider these things ;
Thou didst not think on what was in the end to befall
thee.
6 But hear' now this, O thou voluptuous, that sittest in
security ;
Thou that sayest in thy heart, I am, and there is none
else;
I shall not sit a widow ; I shall not know the loss of
children.
9 Yet shall these two things corae upon thee in a raoment;
In one day, loss of children and vridowhood :
On a sudden shall they come upon thee ;
Notwithstanding the multitude of thy sorceries, and the
great strength of thine enchantments.

92 ISAIAH. Chap. XLVII.
10 But thou didst trust in thy wickedness, and saidst, None
seeth me ;
Thy wisdom and thy knowledge have perverted thy
mind;
So that thou hast said in thy heart, I am, and there is
none besides.
1 1 Therefore evil shall come upon thee, which thou shalt
not know how to deprecate ;
And mischief shaU fall upon fhee, wliich thou shalt not
be able to expiate ;
And destruction shaU come upon thee suddenly, of which
¦ thou shalt have no apprehension.
12 Persist now in thine enchantments ;
And in the multitude of thy sorceries, in which thou
hast laboured from thy youth :
If peradventure thou mayest be profited, if thou mayest
be strengthened by them.
1 3 Thou art wearied in the multiplicity of thy counsels :
Let them stand up now, and save thee ;
The observers of the heavens, the gazers on the stars ;
They that prognosticate at every new moon.
What are the events, that shall happen unto thee.
14 Behold they shall be Uke stubble; the fire shall burn
them up :
They shall not deliver their own souls from the power
of the flame ;
Not a coal to warm one, not a fire to sit by, shall be left
of them,
15 Such shall these be unto thee, with whom thou hast
laboured ;
Thy negociators, with whom thou hast dealt from thy
youth :
Every one shall turn aside to his own business ; none
shall deliver thee,

CliAP. 1 Hear this, O house of Jacob ;
XLVIII. Ye that are caUed by the name of Israel :
Ye that flow from the fountain of Judah ;
Ye that swear by the name of Jehovah,
And pubUcly acknowledge the God of Israel :
But not in sincerity, nor in truth :
2 Who take their name from the Holy City,

Chap. XLVIIL ISAIAH. 93
And raake the God of Israel their support ;
Jehovah God of Hosts is his narae :
3 The forraer things I shewed unto you frora the first ;
And from my mouth they proceeded, and I declared
them :
On a sudden I effected them, and they came to pass,
4 Because I knew, that thou wast obstinate.
And that thy neck was a sinew of iron.
And that thy front was brass :
5 Therefore I shewed them unto thee from the first ;
Before they should corae to pass, I made thee hear them :
Lest thou shouldst say, Mine idol hath caused them ;
And my graven and my molten iraage hath directed thera,
6 Thou didst hear it beforehand ; behold, the whole is
accoraplished :
And will ye not openly acknowledge this ?
Frora this time I make thee hear new things,
Kept secret hitherto, and of which thou hast no know
ledge :
7 They are produced now, and not of old ;
And before this day thou hast not heard them :
Lest thou shouldst say, Lo ! I knew thera, .
8 Yea, thou hast not heard, thou hast not knovm,
Yea, from the first thine ear was not opened to receive
them:
For I knew, that thou wouldst certainly deal falsely,
And that Apostate was thy name frora thy birth,
9 For the sake of ray name I wUl defer mine anger ;
And for the sake of my praise I will restrain it from thee.
That I may not utterly cut thee off,
10 Behold, I have purified thee in the fire, but not as silver ;
I have tried thee in the furnace of affliction,
1 1 For raine own sake wUl I do it ; for how would ray narae
be blasphemed?
And my glory I will not give to another,
12 Hearken unto me, O Jacob my servant;
And Israel, whom I have called,
I ara He ; I am the first, and I am the last :
13 Yea my hand hath founded the earth;
And ray right hand hath spanned the heavens :
I summon thera ; they present theraselves together.

94

ISAIAH. Chap. XLVIIL

14 Gather yourselves together all of you, and hear :
Who among you hath predicted these things ?
He, whom Jehovah hath loved, will execute
His will on Babylon, and his power on the Chaldeans,
15 I, even I, have spoken;- yea I have called him:
I have brought hira, and his way shall prosper.
16 Draw near unto me, and hear ye this :
Frora the beginning I have not spoken in secret ;
Before the time when it began to exist, I had decreed it.
And now the Lord Jehovah hath sent me, and. his
Spirit.
17 Thus saith Jehovah,
Thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel :
I am Jehovah, thy God;
Who teacheth thee what will tend to thy profit ;
Wlio directeth thee in the way wherein thou shouldst go.
18 O that thou hadst attended to my commands !
Then had thy prosperity been like the river ;
And thy blessedness, as the floods of the sea :
19 And thy seed had been as the sand;
And the issue of thy bowels, like that of the bowels
thereof :
Thy name should not be cut off, nor destroyed from
before me.
20 Come ye forth from Babylon ; flee ye from the land
of the Chaldeans with the voice of joy :
Publish ye this, and make it heard ; utter it forth even
to the end of the earth :
Say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed his servant Jacob ;
21 They thirsted not in the deserts, through which he made
them go ;
Waters from the rock, he caused to flow for them ;
Yea he clave the rock, and forth gushed the waters.
22 There is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked.

CHAP. 1 Hearken unto me, O ye distant lands ;
XLIX. And ye peoples, attend from afar.
Jehovah from the womb hath called me;

Chap. XLIX. ISAIAH. 95
From the bowels of my raother hath he mentioned my
narae.
2 And he hath made my mouth a sharp sword ;
In the shadow of his hand he hath concealed rae :
Yea he hath made me a polished shaft;
He hath laid me up in store in his quiver :
3 And he hath said unto me. Thou art my servant ;
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.
4 And I said : I have laboured in vain ;
For nought, and for vanity, I have spent my strength :
Nevertheless my cause is with Jehovah ;
And the reward of my work with my God.
5 And now thus saith Jehovah,
(Who forraed rae frora the womb to be his servant,
To bring back again Jacob unto him,
And that Israel unto him may be gathered :
Therefore am I glorious in the eyes of Jehovah,
And ray God is my strength) :
6 It is a smaU thing for thee, that thou shouldst be ray
servant.
To raise up the scions of Jacob,
And to restore the branches of Israel :
I wiU even give thee for a light to the nations,
To be my salvation to the end of the earth.
7 Thus saith Jehovah,
The redeemer of Israel, his Holy One ;
To hira, whose person is despised, whora the nation
holds in abhorrence ;
To the subject of rulers :
Kings shaU see hira, and rise up ;
Princes, and they shall worship him :
For the sake of Jehovah, who is faithful ;
Of the Holy One of Israel, for he hath chosen thee.
8 Thus saith Jehovah :
In the season of acceptance have I heard thee,
And in the day of salvation have I helped thee ;
And I wiU preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant
of the people ;
To restore the land, to give possession of the desolate
heritages.
9 Saying to the bounden. Go forth ;
And to those that ai-e in darkness, Appear :

96

ISAIAH. Chap. XLIX.

They shaU feed beside the ways,
And on all the eminences shaU be their pasture.
10 They shaU not hunger, neither shall they thirst ;
Neither shaU the glowing heat, or the sun, smite them :
For he, that hath compassion on thera, shall lead them;
And shaU guide them to the bursting sprmgs of water.
1 1 And I wiU make aU my mountains an even way ;
And ray causeways shall be raised on high.
12 Lo ! these shall corae from afar ;
And lo ! these from the north and the west ;
And these from the land of Sinira,
13 Sing aloud, O ye heavens ; and rejoice, O earth ;
Ye mountains, burst forth into song :
For Jehovah hath comforted his people.
And vrill have compassion on his afflicted,
14 But Sion sayeth : Jehovah hath forsaken me ;
And my Lord hath forgotten rae,
15 Can a woraan forget her sucking infant ;
That she should have no tenderness for the son of her
womb?
Even these may forget ;
But I will not forget thee,
16 Behold, on the palms of my hands have I dehneated
thee :
Thy walls are for ever in my sight,
17 They, that destroyed thee, shall soon becorae thy buil
ders;
And they, that laid thee waste, shall become thine off
spring,
18 Lift up thine eyes around, and see ;
AU these are gathered together, they come to thee.
As I live, saith Jehovah,
Surely thou shalt clothe thyself with them all, as with a
rich dress ;
And bind them about thee, as a bride her jewels,
19 For thy waste, and thy desolate plSces,
And thy land laid in ruins ;
Even now it shall be straitened with inhabitants ;
And they, that devoured thee, shall be removed far away,
20 The sons, of whora thou wast bereaved, shall yet say in
thine ears;

Chap. xlix. ISAIAH? 97
This place is too strait for me ; make room for me, that
I raay dwell,
21 And thou shalt say in thine heart : Who hath begotten
me these?
I was bereaved of ray children, and solitary ;
An exile, and an outctist ; who then hath nursed these
up?
Lo .' I was abandoned, and alone ; these then, where
were they ? '
22 Thus saith the Lord Jehovah :
Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations ;
And to the peoples will I exalt my signal ;
And they shall bring thy sons in their bosora,
And thy daughters shall be borne on their shoulder :
23 And kings shall be thy foster-fathers,
And their queens thy nursing raothers :
With their faces to the earth they shall, bow down unto
thee.
And shall lick the dust of thy feet.
And thou shalt know, that I am Jehovah ;
And that they, who trust in him, shall not be ashamed,
24 ShaU the spoil be taken away frora the raighty ?
Or shall the prey seized by the terrible be rescued ?
25 Yea, thus saith Jehovah :
Even the prey of the mighty shall be retaken ;
And the spoil .seized by the terrible shall be rescued :
For vrith those, that contend with thee, I wiU contend ;
And thy children I will deliver,
.26 And I will gorge thine oppressors with their own flesh ;
And with their own blood, as vrith new wine, will I
drench thera :
And all flesh shall know.
That I Jehovah am thy saviour ;
And that thy redeemer is the Mighty One of Jacob,
CHAP, 1 Thus saith Jehovah :
^- Where is this bill of your mother's divorceraent,
By which I dismissed her ?
Or who is he among ray creditors,
To whom I have sold you ?
Behold, for your iniquities are ye sold ;
And for your transgressions is your mother dismissed.

98 ISAIAH. Chap. L.
2 Wherefore came I, and there was no man ?
CaUed I, and none answered ?
Is then my hand so greatly shortened, that I cannot
redeem ?
And have I no power to deliver ?
Behold, at my rebuke I make dry the sea ;
I make the rivers a desert :
Their fish is dried up, because there is no water ;
And dieth away for thirst,
3 I clothe the heavens with blackness ;
And sackcloth I make their covering.

4 The Lord Jehovah hath given me the tongue of the
learned ;
That I might know how to speak a seasonable word to
the weary.
He wakeneth, morning by morning,
He wakeneth mine ear, to hearken vrith the attention of
a learner.
5 The Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear ;
And I was not rebeUious ;
Neither did I withdraw myself backward.
6 I gave my back to the sraiters,
And my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair :
My face I hid not from shame and spitting.
7 For the Lord Jehovah is my helper;
Therefore I ara not ashamed.
Therefore have I set my face as a flint;
And I know, that I shaU not be confounded.
8 He that justifieth me is near at hand :
Who is he that wUl contend with me ? let us stand forth
together :
Who is mine adversary ? let him come on to the contest,
9 Behold, the Lord Jehovah is my advocate :
Who is he that shall condemn me ?
Lo ! all of thera shall wax old as a garment ;
The moth shaU Consurae them,
10 Who is there among you, that feareth Jehovah ?
Let him hearken unto the voice of his servant:
That walketh in darkness, and hath no light ?
Let him trust in the narae of Jehovah ;

Chap. L. ISAIAH. 99
And rest himself on the support of his God.
1 1 Behold, aU ye who kindle a fire ;
Who heap the fuel round about :
Walk ye in the light of your fire.
And of the fuel, which ye have kindled.
This ye shall have at my hand ;
Ye shall lie down in sorrow,
CHAP. 1 Hearken unto me, ye that pursue righteousness,
i^l- Ye that seek Jehovah,
Look unto the rock, from whence ye were hewn ;
And to the hollow of the cave, whence ye were digged,
2 Look unto Abraham your father ;
And unto Sarah, who bore you :
For I caUed him, being a single person,
And I blessed him, and I multiplied him,
3 Thus therefore shall Jehovah console Sion ;
He shall console all her desolations :
And he shall make her wilderness like Eden ;
And her desert like the garden of Jehovah :
Joy and gladness shall be found in her ;
Thanksgiving, and the voice of melody,
4 Attend unto me, O ye peoples;
And give ear unto me, O ye nations :
For the law from me shall proceed ;
And my judgment will I cause to break forth for a light
to the peoples,
5 My righteousness is at hand ; my salvation goeth forth ;
And mine arm shall dispense judgment to the peoples :
Me the distant lands shall expect ;
And to mine arm shall they look with confidence,
6 Lift up unto the heavens your eyes ;
And look down unto the earth beneath :
Verily the heavens shaU dissolve, like smoke ;
And the earth shall wax old, like a garment ;
And its inhabitants shall perish, like the vilest insect :
But my salvation shall endure for ever ;
And my righteousness shall not decay,
7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness •
The people, in whose heart is my law :
Fear not the reproach of wretched man ;

100

ISAIAH. CHAP. LL

Neither be ye borne down by their revdings,
8 For the moth shaU consume them, like a garment;
And the worm shall eat them, like wool :
But my righteousness shall endure for ever ;
And my salvation to the age of ages,
9 Awake, awake, clothe thyself vrith strength, O arm
of Jehovah !
Awake, as in the days of old, the ancient generations.
Art thou not the same that smote Rahab, that wounded
the dragon ?
10 Art thou not the same, that dried up the sea, the waters
of the great deep ?
That made the depths of the sea a path for the redeem
ed to pass through ?
1 1 Thus shaU the ransoraed of Jehovah return.
And come to Sion with loud acclamation :
And everlasting gladness shall crown their heads ;
Joy and gladness shall they obtain.
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away,
12 1, even I, am he that comforteth you :
Who art thou, that thou shouldst fear wretched man,
that dieth ;
And the son of man, that shall become as the grass ?
13 And shouldst forget Jehovah thy maker.
Who stretched out the heavens, and founded the earth ;
And shouldst every day be in continued fear.
Because of the fury of the oppressor.
As if he were just ready to destroy ?
And where noW is the fury of the oppressor ?
14 He marcheth on with speed, who cometh to set free the
captive ;
That he may not die in the dungeon,
And that his bread may not fail,
15 For I am Jehovah thy God;
He, who stilleth at once the sea, though the waves there
of roar ;
Jehovah God of Hosts is his name,
16 I have put my words in thy mouth;
And with the shadow of my hand have I covered thee :
To stretch out the heavens, and to lay the foundations
of the earth ;
And to say unto Sion, Thou art my people.

Chap. LL ISAIAH. 101
17 Rouse thyself, rouse thyself up; arise, O Jerusalem !
Who hast drunken from the hand of Jehovah the cup
of his piry :
The dregs of the cup of trembling thou hast drunken,
thou hast wrung them out,
18 There is not one to lead her, of all the sons which she
hath brought forth ;
Neither is there one to support her by the hand, of all
the sons which she hath educated,
19 These two things have befallen thee ; who shall bemoan
thee?
Desolation, and destruction ; the famine, and the sword ;
who shall comfort thee ?
20 Thy sons lie astounded ; they are cast down ;
At the head of all the streets, like the oryx taken in the
toUs ; *
Drenched to the fidl with the fiiry of Jehovah, with the
rebuke of thy God,
21 'Wherefore hear now this, O thou afflicted daughter;
And thou drunken, but not with vrine,
22 Thus saith thy Lord Jehovah ;
And thy God, who avengeth his people :
Behold, I take from thy hand the cup of trembling ;
The dregs of the cup of my fury ;
Thou shalt drink of it again no more,
23 But I wUl put it into the hand of them "'ho oppress
thee;
Who say to thee, Bow down thy body, that we raay go
over:
And thou layedst down thy back, as the ground ;
And as the street, to them that pass along.

CHAP. 1 Awake, awake ; be clothed with thy strength, O Sion :
I'll- ' , Clothe thyself with thy glorious garments, O Jerusalem,
thou holy city !
For no more shall enter into thee the uncircumcised and
the polluted.
2 Shake thyself from the dust, ascend thy lofty seat, O
Jerusalem :
Loose thyself frora the bands of thy neck, O captive
daughter of Sion ! L

102 ISAIAH. Chap. LII.
3 For thus saith Jehovah :
For nought were ye sold ;
And not with money shall ye be ransomed.
4 For thus saith the Lord Jehovah :
My people went down to Egypt,
At the first, to sojourn there ;
And the Assyrian, at the last, hath oppressed them.
5 And now, what have I more to do, saith Jehovah :
Seeing that my people is taken away for nought;
And they, that are lords over them, make their boast of
it, saith Jehovah ;
And continually every day is my name exposed to con
tempt ?
6 Therefore shall my people know my name in that day :
For I am he, Jehovah, that promised ; and lo ! here I
am !
7 How beautiful appear on the mountains
The feet of the joyful messenger; of him, that announc-
eth peace ! ,
Of the joyful messenger of good tidings; of him, that
announceth salvation !
Of him, that sayeth unto Sion, Thy God reigneth !
8 All thy watchmen lift up their voice ; they shout toge
ther :
For face to face shall they see, when Jehovah returneth
to Sipn^.
9 Burst foriii into joy, shout together, ye ruins of Jerusa
lem !
For Jehovah hath comforted his people ; he hath re
deemed Israel.
10 Jehovah hath made bare his holy arm, in the sight of
all the nations ;
And all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of
our God. »
11 Depart, depart ye, go ye^ut from thence; touch no
polluted thing:
Go ye out from the midst of her ; be ye clean, ye that
bear the vessels of Jehovah !
12 Verily not in haste shall ye go forth;
And not by flight shaU ye march along :
For Jehovah shall march in your front;
And the God of Israel shaU bring up your rear.

Chap. LIL ISAIAH. 103

13 Behold, my servant shall prosper ;
He shall be raised aloft, and magnified, and very highly
exalted.
14 As riiany were astonished at him ;
(To such a degree was his countenance disfigured, more
than that of man ;
And his form, more than the sons of men) ;
15 So shall he sprinkle many nations :
Before him shall kings shut their mouths ;
For what was not before declared to them, they shaU
see.
And what they had not heard, they shall attentively con
sider,
1 Who hath beUeved our report;
And to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been manifested?
2 For he groweth up in their sight like a tender sucker ;
And like a root from a thirsty soU :
He hath no form, nor any beauty, that we should regard
him;
Nor is his countenance such, that we should desire him,
3 Despised, nor accounted in the number of raen ;
A man of sorrows, and acquainted vrith grief;
As one that hideth his face from us ;
He was despised, and we esteeraed him not,
4 Surely our infirmities he hath borne ;
And our sorrows, he hath carried them :
Yet we thought him judicially stricken ;
Smitten of God, and afflicted,- - —
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions ;
Was smitten for our iniquities :
The chastisement, by which our peace is effected, was
laid upon him ;
And by his bruises we are healed,
6 We all of us like sheep have strayed ;
We have turned aside, every one to his own way ;
And Jehovah hath made to light upon him the iniquity
of us all,
7 It was exacted, and he was made answerable ; and he
opened not his mouth :
As a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

• 104 ISAIAH. Chap. LIU.
And as a sheep before her shearers
Is dumb ; so he opened not his mouth,
8 By an pppressive judgment he was taken off;
And his manner of life who would declare ?
For he was cut off from the land of the living ;
For the transgression of my people he was smitten to death,
9 And his grave was appointed with the wicked ;
But with the rich man was his tomb.
Although he had done no wrong,
Neither was there any guile in his moujth ;
10 Yet it pleased Jehovah to crush him with affliction.
If his soul shall make a propitiatory sacrifice.
He shall see a seed, which shaU prolong their days.
And the gracious purpose of Jehovah shall prosper in
his hands,
1 1 Of the travail of his soul he shall see [the fruit], and be
satisfied r
By the knowledge of him shall my servant justify many;
For the punishihent of their iniquities he shall bear,
12 Therefore will I distribute to hira the many for his
portion ; ' .
And the mighty people shall he share for his spoil :
Because he poured out his soul unto death ;
And was numbered with the transgressors :
And he bare the sin of many ;
And made intercession for the transgressors.

CHAP. 1 Shout for joy, O thou barren, that didst not bear;
LIV. Break forth into joyful shouting, and exult, thou that
didst not travail :
For more are the chUdren of the desolate.
Than of the married woraan, saith Jehovah,
2 Enlarge the place of thy tent ;
And let the canopy of thy habitation be extended :
Spare not; lengthen thy cords.
And firmly fix thy stakes :
3 For on the right hand, and on the left, thou shalt burst
forth with increase ;
And thy seed shall inherit the nations ; ,
And they shall inhabit the desolate cities,
4 Fear not, for thou shalt not be confounded ;
And blush not, for thou shalt not be brought to reproach :

Chap. LIV,. ISAIAIL 105
For thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth ;
And the reproach of thy widowhood thou shalt remem
ber no more,
5 For thy husband is thy maker ;
Jehovah God of Hosts is his name :
And thy redeeraer is the Holy One of Israel ;
The God of the whole earth shall he be caUed,
6 For as a woman forsaken, and deeply afflicted, hath Je
hovah recaUed thee ;
And as a wife, wedded in youth, but afterwards rejected,
saith thy God.
7 In a Uttle anger have I forsaken thee ;
But with great mercies will I receive thee again :
8 In a short wrath I hid ray face for a raoraent from thee ;
But with everlasting kindness wUl I have mercy on thee ;
Saith thy redeeraer Jehovah,
9 The same will I do now, as in the days of Noah, when
I sware,
\ That the waters of Noah should no more pass over the
earth:
So have I sworn, that I will not be wroth with thee, nor
rebuke thee.
10 For the mountains shall be removed;
And the hUls shall be overthrown :
But my kindness from thee shaU not be removed ;
And the covenant of my peace shall not be overthrown ;
Saith Jehovah, who beareth towards thee the most
tender affection,
II O thou affUcted, beaten with the storm, destitute of
consolation !
Behold I lay thy stones in cement of vermUion,
And thy foundations with sapphires :
12 An J I will raake of rubies thy battlements ;
And thy gates of carbuncles ;
And the whole •circuit of thy walls shall be of precious
stones,
13 And all thy chUdren shall be taught by Jehovah ;
And great shall be the prosperity of thy children,
14 In righteousness shalt thou be established :
Be thou far from oppres.sion ; yea thou shalt not fear it ;
And from terror ; for it shall not approach thee,
15 Behold, they shall be leagued together, but not by ray
command ;

106

ISAIAH. Chap. LIV.

Whosoever is leagued against thee, shall come over to
thy side,
16 Behold, I have created the smith,
Who bloweth up the coals into a fire,
And produceth instruments according to his work ;
And I have created the destroyer to lay waste.
17 Whatever weapon is formed against thee, it shall not
prosper ;
And against every tongue, that contendeth vrith thee,
thou shalt obtain thy cause.
This is the heritage of Jehovah's servants,
And their justification from me, saith Jehovah.
CHAP. 1 Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters !
^"^- And that hath no silver, come ye, buy, and eat !
Yea, come, buy ye without sUver ;
And without price, wine and mUk.
2 Wherefore do ye weigh out your silver for that which
is no bread ?
And your riches, for that which will not satisfy?
Attend, and hearken unto me; and eat that which is
truly good ;
And your soul shall feast itself with the richest delicacies,
3 IncUne your ear, and come unto me ;
Attend, and your soul shall live :
And I vrill make with you an everlasting covenant ;
I wUl give you the gracious promises made to Darid,
which never shall fad.
4 Behold, for a witness to the peoples I have given him ;
A leader, and a lawgiver to the nations.
5 Behold, the nation, whom thou knewest not, thou shalt
call;
And the nation, who knew not thee, shall run unto thee.
For the sake of Jehovah thy God ;
And for the Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified
thee,
6 Seek ye Jehovah, whUe he may be found;
Call ye upon him, while he is near at hand ;
7 Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;

Chap. LV. ISAIAH. 107
And let him return unto Jehovah, for he will receive
him with compassion;
And unto our God, for he aboundeth in forgiveness.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts ;
Neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth ;
So are my ways higher than your ways,
And my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 VerUy, like as the rain descendeth.
And the snow, from the heavens ;
And thither it doth not return ;
But moisteneth the earth,
And maketh it generate, and put forth its increase ;
That it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the
eater :
1 1 So. shall be the word, which goeth forth from my mouth ;
It shaU not return unto rae fruitless ;
But it shall effect what I have wiUed ;
And make the purpose succeed, for which I have sent it.
12 Surely with joy shaU ye go forth,
And vrith peace shall ye be led onward :
The mountains and the hills shall burst forth before you
into song ;
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorny bushes shall grow up the fir-tree;
And instead of the bramble shall grow up the rayrde :
And it shall be unto Jehovah for a memorial ;
For a perpetual sign, which shall not be abolished.

CHAP. 1 Thus saith Jehovah :
LVL Keep ye judgment, and practise righteousness ;
For my salvation is near, just ready to come ;
And ray righteousness, to be revealed.
2 Blessed is the mortal that doeth this ;
And the son of man that holdeth it fast ;
That keepeth the sabbath, and profaneth it not ;
And restraineth his hand from doing evil.
3 And let not the son of the stranger speak,
That cleaveth unto Jehovah, saying :
Jehovah hath utterly separated me from his people.

108 ISAIAH. Chap. LVL
Neither let the eunuch say :
Behold, I am a dry tree,
4 For thus saith Jehovah to the eunuchs :
Whoever of them shall have kept my sabbaths,
And shall have chosen that in which I delight.
And shall have stedfastly maintained my covenant ;
5 To them I wiU give in my house.
And within my walls, a memorial and a name.
Better than that of sons and daughters :
An everlasting name will I give them,
Which shaU never be cut off,
6 And the sons of the stranger, who cleave unto Jehovah ;
To minister unto him, and to love the name of Jehovah,
And to become his servants :
Every one that keepeth the sabbath, and profaneth it not;
And that stedfastly maintaineth my covenant ;
7 Them wUl I bring unto ray holy mountain ;
And I wUl make them rejoice in my house of prayer ;
Their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be accept
ed on mine altar;
For my house shall be called. The house of prayer for
all the peoples.
8 Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
Who gathereth together the outcasts of Israel :
Yet wUl I gather others unto him, beside those that are
already gathered.

9 O ALL ye beasts of the field, corae away ;
Come to devour, O all ye beasts of the forest !
10 His watchmen are blind, all of them; they are igno
rant ;
They are all of thera durab dogs, they cannot bark :
Dreamers, sluggards, loving to slumber,
1 1 Yea these dogs are of untamed appetite ;
They know not to be satisfied.
And the shepherds themselves cannot understand ;
They all of them turn aside to their own way ;
Each to his own lucre, from the highest to the lowest,
1 2 Come on, let us provide wine ;
And let us swill strong drink :
And as to-day, so shall be the cheer of to-morrow ;
Great, even far more abundant.

Chap. LVIL ISAIAH. 109
CHAP. 1 The righteous raan perisheth, and no one considereth ;
LVIL And pious men are taken away, and no one understand-
eth.
That the righteous raan is taken away, because of the evil,
2 He shall go in peace : he shall rest in his bed ;
Even the perfect raan ; he that walketh in the strait path,
3 But ye, draW ye near hither, O ye sons of the sor
ceress ;
Ye seed of the adulterer, and of the harlot !
4 Of whora do ye make your sport?
At whom do ye widen the mouth, and loll the tongue ?
Are ye not apostate children, a false seed ?
5 Burning with the lust of idols under every green tree ;
Slaying the children in the vallies, under the clefts of the
rocks ?
6 Araong the sraooth stones of the valley is thy portion ;
These, these are thy lot :
Even to these hast thou poured out thy libation.
Hast thou presented thine offering.
Can I see these things with acquiescence ?
7 Upon a high and lofty mountain hast thou set thy bed :
Even thither hast thou gone up to offer sacrifice,
8 Behind the door and the door-posts hast thou set thy
memorial :
Thou hast departed from rae, and art gone up ; thou
hast enlarged thy bed;
And thou hast made a covenant with them :
Thou hast loved their bed ; thou hast provided a place
for it,
9 And thou hast visited the king with a present of oil ;
And hast multiplied thy precious ointments :
And thou hast sent thine ambassadors afar ;
And hast debased thyself even to Hades,
10 In the length of thy journeys thou hast wearied thyself;
Thou hast said. There is no hope :
Thou hast found the support of thy life by thy labour :
Therefore thou hast not utterly fainted,
11 And of whom hast thou been so anxiously afraid, that
thou shouldst thus deal falsely ?
And hast not remembered rae, nor revolved it in thy
mind?

no ISAIAH. Chap. LVIL
Is it not because I was silent, and winked; and thou
fearest me not ?
12 But I will declare ray righteousness;
And thy deeds shall not avail thee,
13 When thou criest, let thine associates deliver thee :
But the wind shall bear them away ; a breath shall take
them off.
But he that trusteth in me shall inherit the land,
And shall possess my holy mountain,
14 Then wUl I say : Cast up, cast up the causeway; make
clear the way ;
Remove every obstruction from the road of my people,
15 For thus saith Jehovah, the high, and the lofty;
Inhabiting eternity ; and whose narae is the Holy One :
The high and the holy place will I inhabit ;
And with the contrite, and hurable of spirit :
To revive the spirit of the hurable ;
And to give life to the heart of the contrite,
16 For I wiU not alway contend ;
Neither for ever wUl I be wroth :
For the spirit from before me would be overwhelmed ;
And the living souls, which I have made,
17 Because of his iniquity for a short time I was wroth: '
And I smote him ; hiding my face in mine anger.
And he departed, turning back in the way of his own heart,
18 I have .seen his ways; and I vrill heal him, and wiU be
his guide ;
And I will restore comforts, to him, and to his mourners,
19 1 create the fruit of the lips :
Peace, peace, to him that is near,
And to him that is afar off, saith Jehovah ; and I will
heal him.
20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea;
For it never can be at rest ;
But its waters work up filth and mire.
21 There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

CHAP. I Cry aloud ; spare not :
LVIII. Like a trumpet lift up thy voice :
And declare unto ray people their transgression ;
And to the house of Jacob their sin.

Chap. LVIIL ISAIAH. Ill
2 Yet rae day after day they seek ;
And to know ray ways they take delight :
As a nation that doeth righteousness.
And hath not forsaken the ordinance of their God.
They continually inquire of me concerning the ordi
nances of righteousness ;
They take delight to draw nigh unto God.
3 Wherefore have we fasted, and thou seest not ?
Have we afflicted our souls, and thou dost not regard ?
Behold, in the day of your fasting, ye enjoy your plea
sure;
And all your demands of labour ye rigorously exact.
4 Behold, ye fast for strife and contention ;
And to smite with the fist the poor.
Wherefore fast ye unto me in this manner ;
To make your voice to be heard on high ?
5 Is such then the fast which I choose ;
That a man should afflict his soul for a day ?
Is it, that he should bow down his head like a bulrush ;
And spread sackcloth .and ashes for his couch ?
ShaU this be called a fast.
And a day acceptable to Jehovah ?
6 Is not this the fast which I choose ?
To dissolve the bands of wickedness ;
To loosen the oppressive burthens ;
To deUver those that are crushed by violence ;
And that ye should break asunder every yoke ?
7 Is it not to distribute thy bread to the hungry;
And to bring the wandering poor into thy house ?
When thou seest the naked, that thou clothe him ;
And that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ?
8 Then shall thy light break forth like the morning ;
And thy wounds shall speedily be healed over :
And thy righteousness shall go before thee ;
And the glory of Jehovah shall bring up thy rear.
9 Then shalt thou call, and Jehovah shaU answer ;
Thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Lo I ara here !
If thou reraove from the midst of thee the yoke ;
The pointing of the finger, and the injurious speech :
10 If thou bring forth thy bread to the hungry,
And satisfy the afflicted soul ;
Then shall thy light rise in obscurity,
And thy darkness shall be as the noon-day.

112 ISAIAH. Chap. LVIIL
11 And Jehovah shall lead thee continually.
And satisfy thy soul in the severest drought ;
And he shall renew thy strength :
And thou shalt be like a well- watered garden, and like a
flowing spring.
Whose waters shall never fad.
12 And they that spring from thee shall build the ancient
ruins ;
The foundations of old times shall they raise up :
And thou shalt be called the repairer of the broken
mound ;
The restorer of paths to be frequented by inhabitants,
13 If thou restrain thy foot from the sabbath ;
From doing thy pleasure on ray holy day :
And shalt call the sabbath, a delight ;
And the holy feast of Jehovah, honourable :
And shalt honour it, by refraining from thy purpose ;
From pursuing thy pleasure, and from speaking vain
words :
14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in Jehovah ;
And I will make thee ride on the high places of the
earth ; .
And I wiU feed thee on the inheritance of Jacob thy
father :
For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it.

CHAP. 1 Behold, the hand of Jehovah is not contracted, so
LIX. that he cannot save ;
Neither is his ear grown dull, so that he cannot hear,
2 But your iniquities have made a separation
Between you and your God ;
And your sins have hidden
His face from you, that he doth not hear,
3 For your hands are polluted with blood,
And your fingers with iniquity ;
Your lips speak falsehood.
And your tongue muttereth wickedness,
4 No one preferreth his suit in justice,
And no one pleadeth in truth :
Trusting in vanity, and speaking lies ;
Conceiving mischief, and bringing forth iniquity.

Chap. LIX. ISAIAH. 113
5 They hatch the eggs of the basilisk,
And Weave the w^b of the spider :
He that eateth of their eggs dieth ;
And when it is crushed, a viper breaketh forth,
6 Of their webs no garment shall be made ;
Neither shall they cover theraselves with their works :
Their works are works of iniquity,
And the deed of violence is in their hands,
7 Their feet run swiftly to evil,
And they hasten to shed innocent blood :
Their devices are devices of iniquity ;
Destruction and calaraity is in their paths,
8 The way of peace they know not ;
Neither is there any judgraent in their tracks :
They have raade to theraselves crooked paths ;
Whoever goeth in them, knoweth not peace.
9 Therefore is judgment far distant from us ;
Neither doth justice overtake us :
We look for light, but behold darkness ;
For brightness, but we walk in obscurity.
10 We grope for the wall, like the blind ;
And we wander, as those that are deprived of sight :
We stumble at raid-day, as in the twilight ;
In the midst of delicacies, as among the dead.
1 1 We groan all of us, like the bears ;
And like the doves, we raake a continued moan.
We look for j udgment, and there is none ;
For -salvation, and it is far distant frora us.
12 For our transgressions are .raultiplied before thee ;
And our sins bring an accusation against us ;
For our transgressions cleave fast unto us ;
And our iniquities' we acknowledge.
13 By rebelling, and lying, against Jehovah ;
And by turning backward from foUowing our God :
By speaking injury, and conceiving revolt;
And by meditating from the heart lying words.
14 And judgraent is turned away backwards ;
And justice standeth aloof:
For truth hath sturabled in the open street ;
And rectitude hath not been able to enter,
15- And truth is utterly lost;
And he that shunneth evil, exposeth himself to be
plundered :

114, ISAIAH. Chap. LIX.
And Jehovah saw it,
And it displeased him, that there was no judgment,
16 And he saw, that there was no man ; '
And he wondered, that there was no one to interpose :
Then his own arm wrought salvation for him ;•
And his righteousness, it supported him,
17 And he put on righteousness, as a breast-plate;
And the helmet of salvation was on his head :
And he put on the garments of vengeance for his cloth
ing;
And he clad himself vrith zeal, as vrith a mande,
18 He is mighty to recompense;
He that is mighty to recompense will requite :
Wrath to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies ;
To the distant coasts a recompense wUl he requite,
19 And they from the west shall revere the name of Je
hovah ;
And they from the rising of the sun, his glory ;
When he shall come, like a river straitened in his course.
Which a strong wind driveth along.
20 And the Redeemer shall come to Sion ;
And shall turn away iniquity from Jacob; saith Je
hovah.
21 And this is the covenant, which I make with them,
saith Jehovah :
My spirit, which is upon thee,
And my words, which»I have put in thy mouth ;
They shall not depart from thy mouth.
Nor from the mouth of thy seed.
Nor from the mouth bf thy seed's seed, saith Jehovah ;
From this time forth for ever.

CHAP. 1 Arise, be thou enlightened; for thy light is come ;
^^- And the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee,
2 For behold, darkness shall cover the earth ;
And a thick vapour the nations :
But upon thee shall Jehovah arise ;
And his glory upon thee shall be conspicuous,
3 And the nations shall walk in thy light ;
And kings- in the brightness of thy sun-rising,
4 Lift up thine eyes round about, and see ;
All of them are gathered together, they come unto thee :

Chap. LX. ISAIAH. 115
Thy sons shall come frora afar ;
And thy daughters shall be carried at the side,
5 Then shalt thou fear, and overflow with joy ;
And thy heart shall be ruffled, and dilated ;
When the riches of the sea shall be poured in upon thee ;
When the wealth of the nations shall corae unto thee,
6 An inundation of caraels shall cover thee ;
The droraedaries of Midian and Epha ;
All of thera frora Saba shall come :
Gold and frankincense shall they bear ;
And the praise of Jehovah shall they joyfully proclaim,
7 All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered unto thee ;
Unto thee shall the raras of Nebaioth rainister :
They shall ascend with acceptance on mine altar ;
And ray beauteous house I will yet beautify,
8 Who are these, that fly like a cloud ?
And like doves upon the wing ?
9 Verily the distant coasts shall await rae ;
And the ships of Tarshish among the first :
To bring thy sons from afar ;
Their silver and their gold with them :
Because of the name of Jehovah thy God;
And of the Holy One of Israel ; for he hath glorified
thee,
10 And the sons of the stranger shall build up thy walls;
And their kings shall minister unto thee :
For in my wrath I smote thee ;
But in my favour I wiU embrace thee with the most-
tender affection,
1 1 And thy gates shaU be open continuaUy ;
By day, or by night, they shall not be shut :
To bring unto thee the wealth of the nations ;
And that their kings may come pompously attended,
12 For that nation, and that kingdom.
Which will not serve' thee, shall perish ;
Yea, those nations shall be utterly desolated,
13 The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee ;
The fir-tree, the pine, and the box together :
To adorn the place of my sanctuary ;
And that I may glorify the place, whereon I rest my
feet,
14 And the sons of thine oppressors shall come bending
before thee ;

116 ISAIAIL Chap. LX.
And all, that scornfully rejected thee, shall do obeisance
to the soles of thy feet :
And they shaU caU thee. The City of Jehovah ;
The Sion of the Holy One of Israel,
15 Instead of thy being forsaken,
And hated, so that no one passed through thee ;
I wUl make thee an .everlasting boast ;
A subject of joy for perpetual generations.
16 And thou shalt suck the milk of nations ;
Even at the breast of kings shalt thou be fostered :
And thou shalt know, that I Jehovah am thy sariour ;
And that thy redeemer is the Mighty One of Jacob,
17 Instead of brass, I wiU bring gold ;
And instead of iron, I will bring sUver :
And instead of wood, brass ;
And instead of stones, iron.
And I will make thine inspectors peace ;
And thine exactors, righteousness,
18 Violence shall no more be heard in thy land;
Destruction and calaraity, in thy borders :
But thou shalt call thy walls. Salvation ;
And thy gates, Praise,
19 No longer shalt thou have the sun for a light by day;
Nor by night shaU the brightness of the moon enlighten
thee:
For Jehovah shall be to thee an everlasting light,
And thy God shall be thy glory,
20 Thy sun shall no more go down ;
Neither shall thy moon wane :
For Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light;
And the days of thy mourning shall be ended,
21 And thy people shall be all righteous;
For ever shall they possess the land :
The cion of my planting, the work of my hands, that I
may be glorified,
22 The little one shall become a thousand ;
And the small one a strong nation :
I Jehovah in due time will hasten it.

Chap. LXL ISAIAH. 117
CHAP. 1 The spirit of Jehovah is upon rae,
L^I- Because Jehovah hath anointed me.
To pubUsh glad tidings to the meek hath he sent me ;
To bind up the broken-hearted :
To proclaim to the captives freedom ;
And to the bounden, perfect liberty :
2 To proclaim the year of acceptance with Jehovah ;
And the day of vengeance of our God,
To comfort all those that mourn ;
3 To impart [gladness] to the mourners of Sion :
To give them a beautifiil crown, instead of ashes ;
The oU of gladness instead of sorrow ;
The clothing of praise, instead of the spirit of heaviness.
That they may be caUed trees approved ;
The plantation of Jehovah for his glory,
4 And they that spring from thee shaU buUd up the ruins
of old times ;
They shaU restore the ancient desolations :
They shall repair the cities laid waste ;
The desolations of continued ages,
5 And strangers shall stand up and feed your flocks ;
And the sons of the aUen shall be your husbandmen and
' vine-dressers,
6 But ye shall be called the priests of Jehovah ;
The ministers of our God, shall be your title.
The riches of the nations shall ye eat;
And in their glory shaU ye raake your boast,
7 Instead of your sharae, ye shall receive a double inheri
tance ;
And of your ignorainy, ye shaU rejoice in their portion :
For in their land a double share shall ye inherit ;
J And everlasting gladness shall ye possess,
" 8 For I am Jehovah, who love judgment;
Who hate rapine and iniquity :
And I will give them the reward of their work with
faithfiilness ;
And an everlasting covenant I will make vrith thera :
9 And their seed shall be iUustrious araong the nations ;
And their offspring, in the midst of the peoples.
All they that see them shall acknowledge them,
That they are a seed which Jehovah hath blessed,
M

118 ISAIAH. Chap. LXL
10 I will greatly rejoice in Jehovah ;
My soul shaU exult in my God.
For he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation ;
He hath covered me with the mantle of righteousness :
As the bridegroom decketh himself with a priestly crovm ;
And as the bride adorneth herself with her costly jewels.
II Surely, as the earth pusheth forth her tender shoots;
And as a garden maketh her seed to germinate :
So shall the Lord Jehovah cause righteousness to spring
forth ;
And^-aise, in the presence of all the nations.

CHAP. 1 For Sion's sake I wUl not keep sUence ;
LXII. And for the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest :
UntU her righteousness break forth as a strong light ;
And her salvation, like a blazing torch,
2 And the nations shaU see thy righteousness ;
And aU the kings, thy glory :
And thou shalt be caUed by a new name.
Which the mouth of Jehovah shall fix upon thee,
3 And thou shalt be a beautiful crown in the hand of Je
hovah ;
And a royal diadem in the grasp of thy God,
4 No more shall it be said unto thee. Thou forsaken !
Neither to thy land shall it be said any more. Thou de
solate !
But thou shalt be called. The object of my delight ;
And thy land. The wedded matron :
For Jehovah shall delight in thee ;
And thy land shaU be joined in marriage,
5 For as a young man weddeth a virgin.
So shaU thy restorer wed thee :
And as the bridegroom rejoiceth in his bride,
So shall thy God rejoice in thee,
6 Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem,
Have I set watchmen all the day ;
And aU the night long they shaU not keep silence,
O ye, that proclaim the name of Jehovah !
7 Keep not silence yourselves, nor let hira rest in sUence;

Chap. LXI L ISAIAH. 119
UntU he establish, and until he render,
Jerusalem a praise in the earth,
8 Jehovah hath sworn by his right hand, and by his
powerful arm :
I will no raore give thy corn for food to thine eneraies ;
Nor shall the sons of the stranger drink thy must, for
which thou hast laboured :
9 But they, that reap the harvest, shall eat it, and praise
Jehovah ;
And they, that gather the rintage, shall drink it in my
sacred courts, i
10 Pass ye, pass through the gates; prepare the way for
the people !
Cast ye up, cast up the causeway; clear it frora the
stones !
Lift up on high a standard to the nations !
1 1 Behold, Jehovah hath thus proclaimed to the end of
the earth :
Say ye to the daughter of Sion, Lo thy saviour coraeth !
Lo ! his reward is with him, and the recompense of his
work before him.
And they shall be called, The holy people, the redeemed
of Jehovah ;
12 And thou shalt be called. The much desired. The city
unforsaken.

CHAP. 1 cHO, Who is this, that cometh from Edom?
^¦'^^^'^- With garments deeply dyed from Botsra?
This, that is magnificent in his apparel ;
Marching on in the greatness of his strength ?
MES, I, who publish righteousness, and am raighty to
save,
2 CHO, Wherefore is thine apparel red ?
And thy garraents, as of one that treadeth the
wine-vat ?
3 MES, I have trodden the vat alone ;
And of the peoples there was not a man with me.
And I trod them in mine anger;
And I trampled them in mine indignation :
And their life-blood was sprinkled upon ray gar
ments ;

ISAIAH. Chap. LXIIL
And I have stained all mine apparel.
For the day of vengeance was in my heart ;
And the year of my redeemed was come.
And I looked, and there was no one to help;
And I was astonished, that there was no one to
uphold :
Therefore raine own arm wrought salvation for me.
And mine indignation itself sustained me.
And I trod down the peoples in mine anger;
And I crushed them in mine indignation;
And I spilled their life-blood on the ground.

7 The mercies of Jehovah wiU I record, the praise of
Jehovah ;
According to aU that Jehovah hath bestowed upon us :
And the greatness of his goodness to the house of Jsrael;
Which he hath bestowed upon them, through his ten
derness and great kindness.
8 For he said : Surely they are my people, children that
will not prove false ;
And he became their saviour in all their distress.
9 It was not an envoy, nor an angel of his presence, that
saved them :
Through his love, and his indulgence, he himself re
deemed them ;
And he took them up, and he bare them, aU the days
of old.
10 But they rebeUed, and grieved his holy spirit;
So that he becarae their enemy ; and he fought against
them.
1 1 And he remembered the days of old, Moses his servant ;
How he brought them up from the sea, with the shep
herd of his flock ;
How he placed in his breast his holy spirit :
12 Making his glorious arm to attend Moses on his-right
hand in his march ;
Cleaving the waters before thera, to raake himself a name
everlasting ;
13 Leading thera through the abyss, hke a courser in the
plain, without obstacle.
14 As the herd descendeth to the valley, the spirit of Je
hovah conducted them :

Chat. XXIIL ISAIAH. 121
So didst thou lead thy people, to make thyself a name
iUustrious.
15 Look dovrai from heaven, and see, from thy holy and
glorious dwelUng :
Where is thy zeal, and thy mighty power ;
The yearning of thy bowels, and thy tender affections?
are they restrained from us?
16 Verily, Thou art our father; for Abraham knoweth us
not.
And Israel doth not acknowledge us.
Thou, O Jehovah, art our fathers
O deliver us for the sake of thy narae 1
17 V^erefore, O Jehovah, dost thou suffer us to err from
thy ways?
To harden our hearts from the fear of thee ?
Return, for the sake of thy servants ;
For the sake of the tribes of thine inheritance.
18 It is little, that they have taken possession of thy holy
mountain ;
That our enemies have trodden down thy sanctuary :
19 We have long been as those, whom thou hast not ruled;
Who have not been called by thy name,
CHAP. 1 O ! that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou
LXIV. wouldst descend;
That the mountains might flow down at thy presence ,'
2 As the fire kindleth the dry fuel ;
As the fire causeth the waters to boil :
To make known thy name to thine enemies ;
That the nations might tremble at thy presence,
3 When thou didst wonderful things, wliich we expected
not;
Thou didst descend; at thy presence the mountains
flowed down,
4 For never have men heard, nor perceived by the ear,
Nor hath eye seen, a God beside thee.
Who doeth such things for those that trust in hira,
5 Thou me^test with joy those who work righteousness ;
Who in thy ways remember thee,
Lo ! Thou art angry ; for we have sinned :
Because of our deeds ; for we have been rebeUious,
6 And we are all of us as a polluted thing ;
And like a rejected garment are all our righteous deeds :

122

ISAIAH. Chap. LXIV,

And we are withered away, like a leaf, all of us ;
And our sins, like the wind, have borne us away,
7 There is no one that invoketh thy narae ;
That rouseth himself up to lay hold on thee :
Therefore thou hast hidden thy face from us ;
And hast delivered us up into the hand of our iniquities.
8 But thou, O Jehovah, thou art our father ;
We are the clay, and thou hast formed us :
We are aU of us the work of thy hands,
9 Be not wroth, O Jehovah, to the uttermost ;
Nor for ever remember iniquity.
Behold, look upon us, we beseech thee; we are all thy
people,
10 Thy holy cities are become a wUderness;
Sion is become a wilderness ; Jerusalem is desolate.
1 1 Our holy and glorious temple,
Wherein our fathers praised thee,
Is utterly burnt up with fire ;
And all the objects of our desire are become a devasta
tion,
12 WUt thou contain thyself at these things, O Jehovah ?
WUt thou keep sUence, and still grievously afflict us ?

CHAP. 1 I AM raade known to those, that asked not for me;
LXV. I am found of those, that sought me not :
I have said : Behold me, here I am,
To the nation, which never invoked my name :
2 I have stretched out my hands all the day to a rebellious
people.
Who walk in an evil way, after their own derices,
3 A people, who provoke me to my face continually;
Sacrificing in the gardens, and burning incense on the
tiles :
4 Who dwell in the sepulchres, and lodge in the caverns ;
Who eat the flesh of the swine ;
And the broth of abominable meats is in their vessels :
5 Who say: Keep to thyself; come not near me; for I
am holier than thou.
These kindle a smoke in my nostrils, a fire burning all
the day long,
6 Behold, this is recorded in writing before rae :
I will not keep sUence, but wUl certainly requite ;

Chap. LXV. ISAIAH. 123
7 I will requite into their bosora their iniquities ;
And the iniquities of their fathers together, saith Jeho
vah :
Who burnt incense on the mountains, and dishonoured
me upon the hills :
Yea I wUl pour into their bogom the full measure of
their former deeds,
8 Thus saith Jehovah :
As when one findeth a good grape in the cluster ;
And sayeth, Destroy it not ; for a blessing is in it :
So wUl I do for the sake of my servants ; I wUl not de
stroy the whole,
9 So will I bring forth from Jacob a seed ;
And from Judah an inheritor of my mountain :
And my chosen shall inherit the land ;
And my servants shall dwell there,
10 And Sharon shall be a fold for the flock.
And the vaUey of Achor a resting for the herd;
For my people, who have sought after me,
1 1 But ye, who have deserted Jehovah ;
And have forgotten my holy mountain :
Who set in order a table for Gad ;
And fill out a libatioq to Meni :
12 You will I number out to the sword ;
And all of you shall bow down to the slaughter.
Because I caUed, and ye answered not ;
I spake, and ye would not hear :
But ye did that, which is evil in my sight ;
And that, in which I delighted not, ye chose.
13 Wherefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah :
Behold, my servants shaU eat, but ye shaU be famished ;
Behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shaU be thirsty ;
Behold, my servants shaU rejoice, but ye shaU be con
founded :
14 Behold, my servants shall sing aloud, for gladness of
heart ;
But ye shall cry aloud, for grief of heart ;
And in the anguish of a broken spirit shall ye howl,
1 5 And ye shall leave your name for a curse to my chosen :
And the Lord Jehovah shaU slay you ;
And his servants shall he call by another name.

124 ISAIAH. Chap. LXV.
16 Whoso blesseth himself upon the earth,
ShaU bless himself in the God of truth ;
And whoso sweareth upon the earth,
Shall swear by the God of truth.
Because the former provocations are forgotten ;
And because they are hidden from mine eyes,
17 For behold, I create new heavens, and a new earth;
And the former ones shall not be remembered,
Neither shall they be brought to mind any more,
18 But ye shall rejoice and exult in the age to come, which
I create:
For lo ! I create Jerusalem a subject of joy, and her
people of gladness ;
19 And I will exult in Jerusalem, and rejoice in my people.
And there shaU not be heard any more therein.
The voice of weeping, and the voice of a distressfid cry ;
20 No more shall be there an infant short-lived ;
Nor an old man who hath not fulfilled his days :
For he, that dieth at an hundred years, shall die a boy ;
And the sinner that dieth at an hundred years, shall be
deemed accursed,
21 And they shall build houses, and shall inhabit them;
And they shall plant vineyards, and shall eat the fruit
thereof,
22 They shall not build, and another inhabit ;
They shall not, plant, and another eat:
For as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people ;
And they shall wear out the works of their own hands.
23 My chosen shall not labour in vain ;
Neither shall they generate a short-Uved race ;
For they shall be a seed blessed of Jehovah ;
They, and their offspring with them.
24 And it shaU be, that before they call, I wUl answer ;
They shall be yet speaking, and I shall have heard.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together ;
And the lion shall eat straw Uke the ox :
But as for the serpent, dust shall be his food.
They shall not hurt, neither shall they destroy.
In all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah.

Chap, LXVI. ISAIAH. 125

CHAP. 1 Thus saith Jehovah :
LXVL -pj^g heavens are my throne ; and the earth is my foot
stool :
Where is this house, which ye buUd for me ?
And where is this place of my rest ?
2 For all these things my hand hath made ;
And all these things are mine, saith Jehovah,
But such a one will I regard, even him that is humble,
' And of a contrite spirit, and that revereth my word,
3 He that slayeth an ox, killeth a man ;
That sacrificeth a lamb, beheadeth a dog ;
That maketh an oblation, [offereth] swine's blood ;
That burneth incense, blesseth an idol :
Yea, they themselves have chosen their own ways ;
And in their abominations their soul delighteth,
4 I will also choose their calamities;
And what they dread, I -wiU bring upon them ;
Because I called, and no one answered ;
I spake, and they would not hear :
And they have done what is evil in my sight ;
And that, in which I delighted not, they have chosen,
5 Hear ye the word of Jehovah, ye that revere his
word:
Say ye to your brethren, that hate you ;
And that thrust you out, for ray name's sake :
Jehovah wiU be glorified, and he will appear ;
To your joy [wiU he appear], and they shall be con
founded,
6 A voice of tumult frora the city ! a voice from the
temple !
The voice of Jehovah ! rendering recompense to his
enemies.
7 Before she was in travail, she brought forth ;
Before her pangs came, she was delivered of a male,
8 Who hath heard such a thing ? and who hath seen the
like of these things ?
Is a country brought forth in one day ?
Is a nation born in an instant ?

126 ISAIAH. Chap. LXVL
For no sooner was Sion in travail, than she brought
forth her chUdren,
9 Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth ?
saith Jehovah :
Shall I, who beget, restrain the birth ? saith thy God,
10 Rejoice with Jerusalem, and exult on her account, aU
ye that love her ;
Be exceedingly joyful with her, aU ye that mourn over
her:
1 1 That ye may suck, and be satisfied, from the breast of
her consolations ;
That ye may draw forth the delicious nourishment from
her abundant stores,
12 For thus saith Jehovah :
Behold, I spread over her prosperity, like the great
river ;
And like the overflowing stream the wealth of the na
tions :
And ye shaU suck at the breast;
Ye shall be carried by the side ;
And on the knees shall ye be dandled,
13 As one, whom his mother comforteth.
So will I comfort you :
And in Jerusalem shaU ye receive consolation.
14 And ye shall see it, and your heart shall rejoice;
And your bones shaU flourish, like the green herb :
And the hand of Jehovah shall be manifested to his
servants ;
And he wdl be moved with indignation against his ene
mies,
15 For, behold ! Jehovah shaU come, as a fire;
And his chariot, as a whirlwind :
To breathe forth his anger in a burning heat,
And his rebuke in flames of fire,
16 For by fire shall Jehovah execute judgment ;
And by his sword, upon aU flesh :
And many shall be the slain of Jehovah,
17 They who sanctify themselves, and purify themselves,
In the gardens, after the rites of Achad;
In the midst of those who eat swine's flesh,
And the abomination, and the field-mouse ;

Chap. LXVL ISAIAH. 127
Together shall they perish, saith Jehovah,
18 For I know their deeds, and their derices:
And I corae to gather all the nations and tongues to
gether ;
And they shall come, and shall see my glory,
19 And I wUl impart to thera a sign ;
And of those that escape I will send to the nations :
To Tarshish, Phul, and Lud, who draw the bow;
Tubal, and Javan, the far distant coasts :
To those, who never heard my name ;
And who never saw my glory :
And they shall declare my glory among the nations,
20 And they shall bring aU your brethren.
From all the nations, for an oblation to Jehovah ;
On horses, and in litters, and in counes ;
On mules, and on dromedaries;
To my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith Jehovah :
Like as the sons of Israel brought the oblation,
In pure vessels, to the house of Jehovah,
21 And of thera wUl I also take,
For priests, and for Levites, saith Jehovah,
22 For like as the new heavens.
And the new earth, which I raake.
Stand continuaUy before me, saith Jehovah ;
So shaU continue your seed, and your narae,
23 And it shall be, frora new moon to new moon,
And from sabbath to sabbath ;
AU flesh shaU corae to worship before rae, saith Jeho
vah,
24 And they shall go forth, and shall see.
The carcasses of the men who rebeUed against me.
For their worm shaU not die.
And their fire shall not be quenched ;
And they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.

NOTES

ISAIAH.

Isaiah exercised the prophetical office during a long period
of time, if he lived to the reign of Manasseh ; for the lowest
computation, beginning from the year in which Uzziah died,
when some suppose him to have received his first appoint
ment to that office, brings it to 61 years. But the tradition
of the Jews, that he was put to death by Manasseh, is very
uncertain; and one of their principal rabbins (Aben Ezra,
Cpm. in Isa. i. 1.) seems rather to think, that he died before
Hezekiah; which is indeed more probable. It is however
certain, that he lived at least to the 15th or 16th year of
Hezekiah : this makes the least possible terra of the duration
of his prophetical office about 48 years. The time of the
delivery of some of his prophecies is either expressly marked,
or sufficiently clear from the history to which they relate :
that of a few others may with sorae probability be deduced
from internal marks; from expressions, descriptions, and
circumstances interwoven. It may therefore be of some use
in this respect, and for the better understanding of his pro
phecies in general, to give here a sumraary view of the his
tory of his time.
The kingdom of Judah seems to have been in a more
flourishing condition during the reigns of Uzziah and Jo
tham, than at any other time after- the revolt of the ten
tribes. The former recovered the port of Elath on the Red
Sea, which the Edomites had taken in the reign of Jorara :
he was successful in his wars with the Philistines, and took
from them several cities, Gath, Jabneh, Ashdod ; as likewise
against some people of Arabia Deserta ; and against the
Ammonites, whom he compelled to pay him tribute. He
repaired and improved the fortifications of Jerusalem ; and

130 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. L
had a great army well appointed and disciplined. He was
no less attentive to the arts of peace; and very much- en
couraged agriculture, and the breeding of cattle, Jotham
maintained the estabhshments and improvements made by
his father ; added to what Uzziah had done in strengthen
ing the frontier places ; conquered the Amraonites, who had
revolted, and exacted from thera a more stated and pro
bably a larger tribute. However, at the latter end of his
time, the league between Pekah king of Israel and Retsin
king of Syria was formed against Judah ; and they began
to carry their designs into execution.
But in the reign of Ahaz his son, not only all these ad
vantages were lost, but the kingdom of Judah was brought
to the brink of destruction, Pekah king of Israel overthrew
the army of Ahaz, who lost in battle 120,000 men; and
the IsfaeUtes carried away captives 200,000 women and
chUdren; which however were released, and sent home
again, upon the remonstrance of the prophet Oded, After
this, as it should seem, (see Vitringa on chap, vii, 2,), the two
kings of Israel and Syria, joining their forces, laid siege to
Jerusalem ; but in this attempt they failed of success. In
this distress Ahaz called in the assistance of Tiglath-Pileser
king of Assyria ; who invaded the kingdoms of Israel and
Syria, and slew Retsin : but he was more in danger than ever
from his too powerful ally ; to purchase whose forbearance,
as he had before bought his assistance, he was forced to strip
himself and his people of all the wealth he could possibly
raise, from his own treasury, from the temple, and from the
country. About the time' of the siege of Jerusalem, the
Syrians took Elath, which was never after recovered. The
Edoraites likewise, taking advantage of the distress of Ahaz,
ravaged Judea, and carried away many captives. The Phi
listines recovered what they had before lost ; and took' many
places in Judea, and maintained themselves there. Idolatry
was established by the command of the king in Jerusalem,
and throughout Judea ; and the service of the temple was
either intermitted, or converted into an idolatrous worship,
Hezekiah, his son, at his accession to the throne, imme
diately set about the restoration of the legal worship of God,
both in Jerusalem and through Judea, He cleansed and
repaired the temple, and held a solemn passover. He im
proved the city, repaired the fortifications, erected magazines
of all sorts, and built a new aqueduct. In the fourth year of

Chap. I. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 131
his reign, Shalmaneser king of Assyria invaded the kingdom
of Israel, took Samaria, and carried away the Israelites into
captivity; and replaced them by different people sent from
his own country : and this was the final destruction of that
kingdom, in the sixth year of the reign of Hezekiah,
Hezekiah was not deterred by this alarming example
from refusing to pay the tribute to the king of Assyria,
which had been imposed on Ahaz, This brought on the in
vasion of Senacherib in the fourteenth year of his reign ; an
account of which is inserted among the prophecies of Isaiah,
After a great and miraculous deliverance from so powerful
an enemy, Hezekiah continued his reign in peace : he pros
pered in all his works, and left his kingdom in a flourishing
state to his son Manasseh ; a son in every respect unworthy
of such a father.

CHAPTER I,
1, The vision of Isaiah — ] It seems doubtful, whether
this title belong to the whole book, or only to the prophecy
contained in this chapter. The former part of the title
seems properly to belong to this particular prophecy : the
latter part, which enumerates the kings of Judah, under
whom Isaiah exercised his prophetical office, seems to ex
tend it to the whole coUection of prophecies delivered in
the course of his ministry, Vitringa (to whora the world
is greatly indebted for his learned labours on this Prophet ;
and to whom we should have owed much more, if he had
not so totally devoted hiraself to Masoretic authority) has,
I think, very judiciously resolved this doubt. He supposes,
that the former part of the title was originally prefixed to
this single prophecy ; and that, when the collection of all
Isaiah's prophecies was made, the enumeration of the kings
of Judah was added, to make it at the same time a proper
title to the whole book. As such it is plainly taken in 2
Chron, xxxii, 32, where the book of Isaiah is cited by this
title: " The vision of Isaiah the Prophet, the son of
Amots," The prophecy contained in this first chapter stands single
and unconnected, making an entire piece of itself. It con
tains a severe remonstrance against the corruptions pre
vailing among the Jews of that time ; powerful exhortations

132 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. L
to repentance; grievous threatenings to the impenitent;
and gracious promises of better times, when the nation shall
have been reformed by the just judgments of God. The
expression upon the whole is clear; the connexion of the
several parts easy ; and, in regard to the images, sentiments,
and style, it gives a beautiful example of the Prophet's
elegant raanner of wi-iting ; though perhaps it may not be
equal in tliese respects to many of the following prophecies.
2. Hear, O ye heavens — ] God is introduced as enter
ing upon a solemn and pubhc action, or pleading, before
the whole world, against his disobedient people. The Pro
phet, as herald, or officer to proclaim the summons to the
court, caUs upon all created beings, celestial and terrestrial,
to attend, and bear vritness to the truth of his plea, and the
justice of his cause. The same scene is more fully displayed
in the noble exordium of Psalm 1. where God summons
aU mankind, from east to west, to be present to hear his
appeal; and the solemnity is held on Sion, where he is at
tended with the sarae terrible pomp that accompanied him
oii Mount Sinai : —
" A consuming fire goes before him.
And round him rages a violent tempest :
He calleth the heavens from above,
And the earth, that he may contend in judgment with his
people." Psal. 1. 3, 4.
By the same bold figure, Micah calls upon the mountains,
that is, the whole country of Judea, to attend to him : Chap.
vi. 1, 2.
" Arise, plead thou before the mountains,
And let the hills hear thy voice.
Hear, O ye mountains, the controversy of Jehovah ;
And ye, O ye strong foundations of the earth :
For Jehovah hath a controversy with his people.
And he will plead his cause against Israel."
With the like invocation Moses introduces his sublime
song ; the design of which was the sarae as that of this pro
phecy, " to testify, as a witness, against the Israelites," for
their disobedience, Deut. xxxi. 21.
" Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak ;
And let the earth hear the words of my mouth." Deut. xxxii. 1.
This in the siraple yet strong oratorical style of Moses is,
" I call heaven and earth to witness against thee this day :

Chap. I. NOTES ON ISAIAH, 133
Ufe and death have I set before thee ; the blessing and the
curse : choose now life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy
seed." Deut. xxx. 19. The poetical style, by an apos
trophe, sets the personification in a much stronger light.
Ibid. — that speaketh} I render it in the present time,
pointing it "lai. There seeras to be an impropriety in de
manding attention to a speech already delivered.
Ibid. / have nourished — ] The LXX have i(imt<r<it, I
have begotten. Instead of Tibna, they read ^mb^ ; a word
little dfflering from the other, and perhaps more proper :
which the Chaldee likewise seems to favour ; " vocavi eos
filios." See Exod. iv. 22. Jer. xxxi. 9.
3. The ox knoweth — ] An amplification of the gross
insensibiUty of the disobedient Jews, by comparing them
with the most heavy and stupid of aU animals, yet not so
insensible as they. Bochart has weU iUustrated the com
parison, and shewn the peculiar force of it. " He sets
them lower than the beasts, and even than the stupidest of
aU beasts ; for there is scarce any more so than the ox and
the ass. Yet these acknowledge their master ; they know
the manger of their lord : by whom they are fed, not for
their own, but for his good ; neither are they looked upon
as chUdren, but as beasts of burthen ; neither are they ad
vanced to honours, but oppressed with great and daily
labours : While the Israelites, chosen by the mere favour
of God, adopted as sons, proraoted to the highest dignity,
yet acknowledged not their Lord and their God ; but des
pised his coraraandraents, though in the highest degree equi
table and just." Hieroz. i. col. 409.
Jereraiah's comparison to the same purpose is equally
elegant ; but has not so much spirit and severity as this of
Isaiah : — ¦
" Even the stork in the heavens knoweth her season ;
And the turtle, and the swallow, and the crane, observe the
time of their coming :
But my people doth not know the judgment of Jehovah," Jer, viii, 7,
Hosea has given a very elegant turn to the sarae iraage,
in the way of raetaphor or aUegory :
" I drew them with human cords, with the bands of love :
And I was to them, as he that lifteth up the yoke upon their
cheek ;
And I laid down their fodder before them," Hosea, xi, 4,
N

134 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. L
Salomo ben Melech thus explains the middle part of the
verse, which is somewhat obscure : " I was to them at their
desire, as they that have compassion on a heifer, lest she
be over-worked in ploughing; and that lift up the yoke
from off her neck, and rest it upon her cheek, that she may
not still draw, but rest from her labour an hour or two in
the day."
Ibid, But Israel—'] The LXX, Syriac, AquUa, Theo
dotion, and Vulgate, read bNliyi, adding the conjunction;
which, being rendered as an adversative, sets the opposi
tion in a stronger light.
Ibid, Me.] The same ancient versions agree in adding
this word; which very properly answers, and indeed is
almost necessarily required to answer, the words possessor
and lord preceding, lo-panx Ss ME xx vpu, LXX, " Israel
autem me non cognorit," Vulg. ic-pasnA "hi MOr sx £y»», Aq,
Theod, The testimony of so scrupulous an interpreter
as AquUa is of great weight in this case. And both his
and Theodotion's rendering is such, as shews plainly, that
they did not add the word MOr to help out the sense ; for
it only embarrasses it. It also clearly determines what was
the original reading in the old copies, from which they trans
lated, Tt could not be ^3i?is which most obviously answers
to the version of LXX and Vulg, for it does not accord
with that of Aquila and Theodotion, The version of these
latter interpreters,^ however injudicious, clearly ascertains
both the phrase, and the order of the words, of the original
Hebrew: it was yTi Nb ^mx butw^i. The word ^mx has
been lost out of the text. The very same phrase is used by
Jeremiah, chap, iv, 22, in'' xb imx '•nr : and the order of
the words must have been as above represented ; for they
have joined VxTiyi with Tiix, as in regimine : they could
not have taken it in this sense, Israel meus non cognovit,
had either this phrase, or the order of the words, been dif
ferent, I have endeavoured to set this matter in a clear
light, as it is the first example of a whole word lost out of
the text ; of which the reader will find many other plain
examples in the course of these notes.
The LXX, Syr, Vulg, read '•nri, " and my people;"
and so likewise sixteen MSS.
4. degenerate] Five MSS (one of them ancient) read
Qinnwn without the first ' ; in Hophal, corrupted, not

Chap. L NOTES ON ISAIAH. 135
corrupters. See the same word, in the sarae form, and in
the same sense, Prov. xxv. 26.
Ibid. — are estranged] Thirty-two MSS (five ancient)
and two editions, read "ni>5 : which reading determines the
word to be from the root iir, to alienate, not from Tra, to
separate .- so Kimchi understands it. See also Annotat. in
Noldium, 68.
Ibid, they have turned their backs upon him] So Kimchi
explains it: " they have turned unto him the back, and
not the face :" see Jer. ii. 27. vii. 24. I have been forced
to render this line paraphrasticaUy ; as the verbal transla
tion " they are estranged backward," would have been un
intelligible. 5. On what part — ] The Vulgate renders nn bjc, super
quo, (see Job xxxviu. 6. 2 Chron. xxxii. 10.), upon what
part: and so Abendana, on Sal. b. Melech: " There are
some who explain it thus : Upon what limb shall you be
smitten, if you add defection? for already for your sins have
you been smitten upon aU of them ; so that there is not to
be found in you a whole limb, on which you can be smitten."
Which agrees with what foUows: " From the sole of the
foot even to the head, there is no soundness therein :" and
the sentiment and image is exactly the same with that of
Ovid, Pont. u. 7. 42.
" Vix habet in nobis jam nova plaga locum."
Or that still more expressive Une of Euripides ; the great
force and effect of which Longinus ascribes to its close and
corapressed structure, analogous to the sense which it ex
presses : —
I'm full of miseries : there's no room for more.
Here. Fur. 1245, Long, sect, 40.
" On what part will ye strike again ; wiU ye add correc
tion ? " This is addressed to the instruments of God's ven
geance ; those that inflicted the punishment, who or what
soever they were. " Ad verbum certae personse intelligendae
sunt, quibus ista actio [quse per verbum exprimitur] cora-
petit:" as Glassius says in a similar case, Phil, Saer, i, 3, 22,
See chap, viii, 4,
As from rns nyn, knowledge; from yps ns:f, counsel;
from \W, nau;, sleep, &c, ; so from idi is regularly derived
friD, correction.

136 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap; L
6, It hath not been pressed — ] The art of medicine in
the East consists chiefly in external applications: accord
ingly the Prophet's images in this place are all taken from
surgery. Sir John Chardin, in his note on Prov, in, 8, " It
shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones,"
observes, that " the comparison is taken from the plasters,
ointments, oUs,- frictions, which are made use of in the East
upon the belly and stomach in most maladies. Being
ignorant in the villages of the art of making decoctions and
potions, and of the proper doses of such things, they gene
rally make use of external medicines," Harmer's Observa
tions on Scripture, vol. u. p. 488. And in surgery their
materia medica is extremely simple ; oU making the prin
cipal part of it. " In India," says Tavernier, " they have
a certain preparation of oil and melted grease, which they
commonly use for the healing of wounds." Voyage Ind. So'
the good Samaritan poured oil and wine on the wounds of
the distressed Jew : wine, cleansing and somewhat astrin
gent, proper for a fresh wound ; oil, mollifying and healing.
Luke X. 34.
Of the three verbs in this sentence, one is in the singular
number in the text, another is singular in two MSS (one
of them ancient) n'ii;in ; and Syr. and Vulg. render aU of
them in the singular number.
7 — 9. Your country is desolate — ] The description of
the ruined and desolate state of the country in these verses,
does not suit with any part of the prosperous times of Uzziah
and Jotham. It very well agrees with the time of Ahaz,
when Judea, was ravaged by the joint invasion of the Israel
ites and Syrians, and by the incursions of the PhUistines and
Edomites. The date of this prophecy is therefore generally
fixed to the time of Ahaz. But on the other hand it may
be considered^ whether those instances of idolatry, which
are urged in the 29th verse, (the worshipping in groves and
gardens), having been at all times too commonly practised,
can be supposed to be the, only ones which die Prophet
would insist upon in the time of Ahaz ; who spread the
grossest idolatry through the whole country, and introduced
it even into the temple ; and, to complete his abominations,
made his son pass through the fire to Moloch. It is said,
2 Kings XV. 37. that in Jotham's time " the Lord began to
send against Judah Retsin and Pekah :" If we may suppose
any invasion from that quarter to have been actually made

Chap. L NOTES ON ISAIAH. 137
at the latter end of Jothara's reign, I should choose to refer
this prophecy to that time.
7. Dili, (at the end of the verse). This reading, though
confirmed by all the ancient versions, gives us no good sense ;
for, your land is devoured by " strangers ; and is desolate, as
if overthrown by strangers," is a mere tautology, or, what is
as bad, an identical comparison. Aben Ezra thought, that
the word, in its present form, might be taken for the same
with DU, an inundation : Schultens is of the same opinion,
(see Taylor's Concord.) ; and Schindler in his Lexicon ex
plains it in the same manner ; and so, says Kimchi, some
explain, it. Abendana endeavours to reconcile it to gram
matical analogy in the following manner: — " D^iT is the
same with Dit ; that is, as overthrown by an inundation of
waters .- and these two words have the same analogy as Dip
and on p. Or it may be a concrete, of the same form with
1*311?; and the meaning will be; as overthrown by rain
pouring down violently, and causing a flood." On Sal. b.
Melech, in loc. But I rather suppose the true reading to
be Dit, and have translated it accordingly: the word Dnr,
in the line above, seems to have caught the transcriber's eye,
and to have led him into this mistake.
8. as a shed in a vineyard — ] A little temporary hut
covered with boughs, straw, turf, or the like materials, for a
shelter from the heat by day, and the cold and dews by night,
for the watchman that kept the garden, or vineyard, during
the short season while the fruit was ripening; (see Job xxvii.
18.) ; and presently reraoved, when it had served that pur
pose. See Harmer, Observ. i. 454. They were probably
obliged to have such a constant watch, to defend the fruit
from the jackals. " The jackal," (chical of the Turks),
says Hasselquist, (Travels, p. 277.), " is a species of mustela
which is very common in Palestine, especially during the
vintage, and often destroys whole vineyards, and gardens of
cucumbers." " There is also plenty of the canis vulpes, the
fox, near the convent of St John in the desert, about vin
tage time; for they destroy all the vines, unless they are
strictly watched." Ibid. p. 184. See Cant. ii. 15.
Fruits of the gourd kind, melons, water-melons, cucum
bers, '&c. are much used, and in great request, in the Le
vant, on account of their cooling quality. The Israelites in
the wilderness regretted the loss of the cucurabers and the
melons, among the other good things of Egypt; Numb. xi. 5.

138 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. L
In Egypt, the season of water-melons, which are most in re
quest, and which the common people then chiefly live upon,
lasts but three weeks. See Hasselquist, p. 256. Tavernier
makes it of longer continuance : — " L'on y void de grands
carreaux de melons et de concombres; mais beaucoup plus
des derniers, dont les Levantins font leur delices. Le plus
souvent ils les mangent sans les peler, apres quoy ils vont
boire une verre d'eau, Dans toute I'Asie c'est la nourriture
ordinaire du petit peuple pendant trois ou quatre mois ; toute
la famille en vit, et quand un enfant demande a manger, au
lieu qu'en France ou aiUeurs nous luy donnerions du pain,
dans le Levant on luy presente un concombre, qu'il mange
cru comme on le vient de cueillir. — Les concombres dansle.
Levant ont une bonte particuli^re, et quoyqu' on les mange
crus, ils ne font jaraais de mal." Tavernier, Relat, du Ser-
rail, c. xix.
Ibid, a city taken by siege.] So LXX and Vulg.
9. Jehovah God of Hosts] As this title, of God nixis
nins " Jehovah of Hosts," occurs here for the first time,
I think it proper to note, that I translate it always, as in this
place, " Jehovah God of Hosts;" taking it as an elliptical
expression for nixas '¦nbx nin\ This tide imports, that
Jehovah is the God, or Lord, of hosts or armies ; as he is
the Creator, and supreme Governor of all beings in heaven
and earth ; and disposeth and ruleth them aU in their seve
ral orders and stations ; the Almighty, Universal Lord.
10. Ye prifices of Sodom — ] The incidental mention of
Sodom and Gomorrah in the preceding verse, suggested to
the Prophet this spirited address to the rulers and inhabi
tants of Jerusalem, under the character of princes of Sodom
and people of Gomorrah. Two examples of a sort of ele
gant turn of the like kind may be observed in St Paul's
Epistle to the Romans, xv. 4, 5. and 12, 13. See Locke
on the place ; and see 29, 30. of this chapter ; which gives
another exaraple of the same,
11. -^the/at of fed beasts ,- And in the blood—] The fat
and the blood are particularly .mentioned, because these
were in aU sacrifices set apart 'to God. The fat was always
burnt upon the altar; and the blood was partly sprinkled,
differently on different occasions, and partly poured out at
the bottom of the altar. See Lev. iv.
11—16. What have I to do— ] The prophet Amos has
expressed the^ame sentiments with great elegance :

Chap. I. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 139
" I hate, I despise your feasts ;
And I will not delight in the odour of your solemnities ;
Though ye oifer unto me burnt-oiferings:
And your meat-offerings I wdl not accept ;
Neither will I regard the peace-offering of your fatlings.
Take away from me the noise of your songs ;
And the melody of your viols I will not hear.
But let judgment roll down like waters ;
And righteousness liBe a mighty stream." Amos, v, 21 — 24,
12, Tread my cowts no more — ] So the LXX divide
the sentence; joining the end of this verse to the beginning
of the next,
\Q. The fast, and the day of restraint] nisyi ^ix. These
words are rendered in many different manners by different
interpreters ; to a good and probable sense by all ; but, I
think, by none in .such a sense as can arise frora the phrase
itself, agreeably to the idiom of the Hebrew language. In
stead of ]ix, the LXX manifestly read Dis, n^nxv, " the
fast," This Houbigant has adopted. The Prophet could
not well have omitted the fast in the enumeration of their
solemnities ; nor the abuse of it, among the instances of their
hypocrisy, which he has treated at large with such force and
elegance in his 58th chapter. Observe also, that the pro
phet Joel twice joins together the fast, and the day of re
straint : may ixip dis iwip
" Sanctify a fast ; proclaim a day of restraint," Joel i, 14, ii, 15,
Which shews how properly they are here joined together.
nisy, the restraint, is rendered, both here and in other
places in our English translation, the solemn assembly. Cer
tain holy days, ordained by the law, were distinguished by
a particular charge, that " no servile work .should be done
therein," Lev. xxiii. 36, Numb, xxix. 35, Deut, xvi, 8,
This circumstance clearly explains the reason of the name,
the restraint, or the day of restraint, given to those days.
If I could approve of any translation of these two words,
which I have raet with, it should be that of the Spanish ver
sion of the Old Testament, made for the use of the Spanish
Jews : " tortura y detenimiento," " it is a pain and a con
straint unto me," But I still think, that the reading of the
LXX is more probably the truth.
15. When ye spread — ] The Syr. LXX, and MS, read
D3iDiBi, without the conjunction i.

140 NOTES ON ISAIAH, Chap, L
Ibid, For your hands — ^] Ai y«g •jca^a- LXX, Manus
enim vestrge, Vulg. They seem to have read D3il> <5.
16. Wash ye — ] Referring to the preceding verse, " your
hands are full of blood ;" and alluding to the legal washings
commanded on several occasions. See Lev. xiv. 8, 9, 47.
17. amend that which is corrupted] yinn iiwx. In
rendering this obscure phrase I follow Bochart, (Hieroz.
Part. I. lib. U, cap. 7.), though I am not perfectly satisfied
with his explication of it.
18. Though your sins were as scarlet — ] 'JW, " scarlet,
or crimson," dibaphum, twice dipped, or double-dyed ; from
n:w, iterare, to double, or to do a thing twice. This deriva
tion seems much more probable than that which Salmasius
prefers, from pw, acuere, from the sharpness and strength
of the colour; o^utptrnxm. ybn, the same; properly the
worm, vermiculus, (from whence vermeil) ; for this colour
was produced from a worm, or insect, which grew in a coc
cus, or excrescence, pf a shrub of the ilex kind, (see Plin.
Nat. Hist. xvi. 8.) ; like the cochineal worm in the opuntia
of America, (see Ulloa's Voyage, b. v. ch. 2. note to p. 342.)
There is a shrub of this kind, that grows in Provence and
Languedoc, and produces the like insect, called the kermes
oak, (see MUler, Diet, Querpus) ; from kermez, the Arabic
word for this colour; whence our word crimson is derived,
" Neque amissos colores
Lana refert medicata fuco,"
says the poet ; applying the same image to a different pur
pose. To discharge these strong colours is impossible to hu
man art or power ; but to the grace and power of God, aU
things, even much more difficult, are possible and easy,
19, Ye shall feed on the good of the land] Referring, to
ver, 7, ; it shall not be " devoured by strangers,"
20, Ye shall be food for the sword] The LXX and
Vulg, read DDbpxn, " the sword shall devour you " which
is of much raore easy construction than the present reading
of the text.
" The Chaldee seeras to read ibaxn a^ix aina ; " ye shall
be consuraed by the sword of the enemy." Syr, also reads
aim, and renders the verb passively. And the rhythmus
seems to require this addition, Dr Jubb,
21, — become a harlot] See Lowth, Comment, on the
place ; and De S, Poes, Hebr, Prsel, xxxi,

Chap. L NOTES ON ISAIAH. 141
22, wine mixed with water] An image used for the
adulteration of wine, with more propriety than raay at first
appear, if what Thevenot says of the people of the Levant
of late times was true of them formerly : He says, " they
never mingle water with their wine to drink ; but drink by
itself what water they think proper for abating the strength
of the wine," " Lorsque les Persans boivent du vin, ils le
prennent tout pur, a la fa^on des Levantins, qui ne le me-
lent jamais avec de I'eau ; mais en beuvant du vin, de temps
en temps ils prennent un pot d'eau, et en boivent de grand
traits," Voyage, Part, II, liv, ii, chap, 10, " lis (les Turcs)
n'y melent jamais d'eau, et se moquent des Chrestiens, qui
en.mettent, ce qui leur serable tout-a-fait ridicule," Ibid,
Part, I, chap, 24.
It is reraarkable, that whereas the Greeks and Latins by
mixed wine always understood wine diluted and lowered with
water, the Hebrews on the contrary generally mean by it
wine raade stronger and raore inebriating, by the addition
of higher and raore powerful ingredients; such as honey,
spices, defrutum, (or vrine inspissated by boiling it down to
two-thirds, or one-half, of the quantity), myrrh, raandra-
gora, opiates, and other strong drugs. Such were the ex
hilarating, or rather stupifying, ingredients, which Helen
mixed in the bowl together with the wine for her guests op
pressed with grief, to raise their spirits ; the composition of
which she had learned in Egypt :
Avtik' ttf Uf oiwi ^«,>.i (^n^^axov, ivkv sviveti,
NuTTitii! T x^ohoi TI, xtcxai)! i-niXniav XTrccvlav. Hom, Odys. iv. 220,
" Mean while, with genial joy to warm the soul.
Bright Helen mix'd a mirth-inspiring bowl ;
Temper'd with drugs of sovereign use, t' assuage
The boiling bosom of tumultuous rage :
Charm'd with that virtuous draught, th' exalted mind
All sense of woe delivers to the wind," Pope,
Such was " the spiced wine and the juice of pome
granates," mentioned Cant, viu, 2, And how ranch the
eastern people to this day deal in artificial liquors of pro
digious strength, the use of wine being forbidden, raay be
seen in a curious chapter of Keippfer upon that subject,
Aracen, Exot, Fase, iii, Obs. 15,
Thus the drunkard is properly described, (Prov, xxiu,
30,), as one " that seeketh mixt wine;" and is " mighty to
mingle strong drink :" Isaiah, v, 22, And hence the Psal-

142 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. L
mist took that highly poetical and sublime image of the'
cup of God's wrath, called by Isaiah, (U, 17,) " the cup of
trembling," (causing intoxication and stupefaction; see
Chappelow's note on Hariri, p, 33,) ; containing, as St John
expresses in Greek this Hebrew idea, with the utmost pre
cision, though with a seeming contradiction in terms, xixifcta-.
ftivoy ctxealiv, merum mixtum, pure wine made yet stronger by
a mixture of powerful ingredients : Rev, xiv, 10, " In the
hand of Jehovah," saith the Psalmist, (Psal,lxxv,9,), "there
is a cup, and the wine is turbid : it is full of a mixed liquor,
and he poureth out of it : (or rather, " he poureth it out of
one vessel into another," to mix it perfectly ; according to
the reading expressed by the ancient versions, nr bx nin
ii''i) : verily the dregs thereof, (the thickest sediment of the
strong ingredients mingled with it), all the ungodly of the
earth shall wring them out, and drink them,"
23, associates—] The LXX, Vulg, and four MSS,
read 'lan, without the conjunction 1.
24, Aha ! I will be eased — ] Anger, arising from a sense
of injury and affront, especially from those who, from every
consideration of duty and gratitude, ought to have behaved
far otherwise, is an uneasy and painful sensation ; and re
venge, executed to the full on the offenders, removes that
uneasiness, and consequently is pleasing and quieting, at
least for the present, Ezekiel introduces God expressing
himself in the same manner :
" And mine anger shall be fully accomplished ;
And I will make my fury rest upon them ;
And I will give myself ease," Chap, v, 13,
This is a strong instance of the metaphor called Anthropo-
pathia; by which, throughout the Scriptures, as weU the
historical as the poetical parts, the sentiments, sensations,
and affections, the bodily faculties, qualities, and members
of men, and even of brute animals, are attributed to God;
and that with the utraost liberty and latitude of application.
The foundation of this is obvious ; it arises from necessity :
we have no idea of the natural attributes of God, of his pure
essence, of his manner of existence, of his manner of acting :
when therefore we would treat on these subjects, we find
ourselves forced to express them by sensible images. But
necessity leads to beauty : this is true of raetaphor in gene
ral, and in particular of this kind of metaphor; which is

Chap. L NOTES ON ISAIAH. • 143
used with great elegance and sublimity in the sacred poetry :
and what is very remarkable, in the grossest instances of the
application of it, it is generally the most striking and the
most sublime. The reason seems to be this : When the
images are taken from the superior faculties of the human
nature, from the purer and more generous affections, and
applied to God, we are apt to acquiesce in the notion ; we
overlook the metaphor, and take it as a proper attribute :
but when the idea is gross and offensive, as in this passage
of Isaiah, where the impatience of anger, and the pleasure
of revenge, is attributed to God ; we are immediately shock
ed at the application ; the impropriety strikes us at once ;
and the mind, casting about for something in the divine
nature analogous to the image, lays hold on some great,
obscure, vague idea, which she endeavours in vain to com
prehend, and is lost in immensity and astonishment. See
De S, Poesi Hebr, Prael, xvi, sub fin, where this matter
is treated and illustrated by examples,
25, in the furnace] The text has laa ; which sorae ren
der, " as with soap " as if it were the sarae with nmaa ; so
Kimchi : but soap can have nothing to do with the purifying
of metals: others, " according to purity, ov purely," as our
version, Le Clerc conjectured, that the true reading is
liaa, " as in the furnace .-" see Ezek, xxii, 18, 20, Dr Du
rell proposes only a transposition of letters laa ; to the same
sense : and so likewise Archbishop Seeker, That this is the
true reading is highly probable,
26, And after this—] The LXX, Syr, Chald, and
eighteen MSS, add the conjunction i,
27, — in judgment ;] by the exercise of God's strict jus
tice in destroying the obdurate, (see ver, 28,), and delivering
the penitent : — in righteousness ; by the truth and faithfiil
ness of God in performing his promises,
29,30, For ye shall be ashamed of the ilexes — ] Sacred
groves were a very ancient and favourite appendage of ido
latry. They were furnished with the temple of the god to
whom they were dedicated ; with altars, images, and every
thing necessary for performing the various rites of worship
offered there ; and were the scenes of many impure cere
monies, and of much aborainable superstition. They made
a principal part of the religion of the old inhabitants of Ca
naan ; and the Israelites were comraanded to destroy their
groves, araong other monuments of their false worship.

141 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. L
The IsraeUtes themselves became afterward very much ad
dicted to this species of idolatry,
" 'When I had brought them into the land,
¦Which I sware that I would give unto them ;
Then they saw every high hill, and every thick tree :
And there they slew their victims ;
And there they presented the provocation of their offerings ;
And there they placed their sweet savour ;
And there they poured out their libations," Ezek, xx, 28,
" On the tops of the mountains they sacrifice ;
And on the hills they burn incense :
Under the oak, and the poplar ; •
And the ilex, because her shade is pleasant," Hosea, iv, 13,
Of what particular kinds the trees here mentioned are, it
cannot be determined with certainty. In regard to nbx, in
this place of Isaiah, as well as in Hosea, Celsius (Hierobot)
understands it of the terebinth ; because the most ancient
interpreters render it so ; in the first place the LXX. He
quotes eight places ; but in three of these eight places the
copies vary, some having Sgus instead of Tsgso.vflos. And he
should have told us, that these same LXX render it in six
teen other places by S^«? : so that their authority is really
against hira ; and the LXX slant pro quercu, contrary to
what he says at first setting out. Add to this, that Sym
raachus, Theodotion, and Aquila, generally render it by
Sgus; the latter only once rendering it by reg8?i»^of. His
other arguments seem to me not very conclusive : he says,
that all the qualities of nbx agree to the terebinth ; that it
grows in mountainous countries; that it is a strong tree;
long-lived ; large and high ; and deciduous. All these
qualities agree just as well to the oak, against which he
contends; and he actually attributes them to the oak
in the very next section. But, I think, neither the oak
nor the terebinth will do in this place of Isaiah, from the
last circumstance which he mentions, their being deci
duous ; where the Prophet's design seems to me to require
an ever-green : otherwise the casting of its leaves would
be nothing out of the comraon established course of nature,
and no proper iraage of extreme distress, and total desola
tion; parallel to that of a garden without water, that is,
wholly burnt up and destroyed. An ancient, who was an
inhabitant and a native of this country, understands it, in
like manner, of a tree blasted with uncommon and immode-

Chap. I. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 145
rate heat: — " velut arbores, cum frondes sestu torrente de-
cusserunt," Ephraera Syr, in loc, edit, Asseraani, Com
pare Psal, i, 4, Jer, xvii, 8, Upon the whole, I have chosen
to make it the ilex; which word Vossius (Etymolog,) de
rives from the Hebrew nbx; that, whether the word itself
be rightly rendered or not, I raight at least preserve the
propriety of the poetical iraage,
29, For ye shall be ashamed] 1W1 an, in the second per
son, Vulg, Chald, two MSS, and one edition ; and in agree
ment with the rest of the sentence.
30. — whose leaves] Twenty-six MSS and three editions
read n'bff, in its fuU and regular form. This is worth re
marking, as it accounts for a great nuraber of anoraalies of
the like kind, which want only the same authority to rectify
them. 30. — a garden wherein is no water.] In the hotter
parts of the eastern countries, a constant supply of water
is so absolutely necessary for the cultivation, and even for
the preservation and existence of a garden, that should it
want water but for a few days, every thing in it would be
burnt up with the heat, and totally destroyed. There is
therefore no garden whatever in those countries, but what
has such a certain supply ; either from sorae neighbouring
river, or from a reservoir of water collected frora springs,
or filled with rain-water in the proper season, in sufficient
quantity to afford ample provision for the rest of the year.
Moses, having described the habitation of man newly
created, as a garden, planted with every tree pleasant to the
sight and good for food, adds, as a circumstance necessary
to complete the idea of a garden, that it was well supplied
with water: (Gen. ii. 10. and see xiii. 10.) " And a river
went out of Eden to water the garden."
That the reader raay have a clear notion of this matter,
it will be necessary to give some account pf the manageraent
of their gardens in this respect.
" Damascus, (says Maundrell, p. 122.), is encompassed
with gardens, extending no less, according to common
estimation, than thirty miles round; which makes it look
like a city in a vast wood. The gardens -are thick set with
fruit-trees of all kinds, kept fresh and verdant by the waters
of Barrady, (the Chrysorrhoas of the ancients), which
supply both the gardens and city in great abundance. This
river, as soon as it issues out from between the. cleft of the

146 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. L
mountain before mentioned into the plain, is immediately
divided into three streams ; of which the middlemost and
biggest runs directly to Damascus, and is distributed to all
the cisterns and fountains of the city. The other two
(which I take to be the work of art) are drawn round, one
to the right hand, and the other to the left, on the borders
of the gardens, into which they are let as they pass, by little
currents, and so dispersed all over the vast wood: inso
much, that there is not a garden but has a fine quick stream
running through it. Barrady is almost wholly drunk up by
the city and gardens. What small part of it escapes is
'united, as I was informed, in one channel again, on the
south-east side of the city; and, after about three or four
hours' course, finally loses itself in a bog there, without ever
arriving at the sea." This was Ukewise the case in former
times, as Strabo, lib. xvi. Pliny, v. 18. testify; who say,
^' that this river was expended in canals, and drunk up by
watering the place,"
" The best sight (says the same MaundreU, p, 39,) that
the palace [of the Emir of Beroot, anciently Berytus]
affords, and the worthiest to be remembered, is the orange
garden. It contains a large quadrangular plat of ground,
divided into sixteen lesser squares, four in a row, with walks
between them. The walks are shaded with orange- trees, of
a large spreading size. Every one of these sixteen lesser
squares in the garden was bordered with stone ; and in the
stone-work were troughs, very artificially contrived, for con
veying the water all over the garden: there being little
outlets cut at every tree, for the stream, as it passed by, to
flow out, and water it," The royal gardens at Ispahan are
watered just in the same manner, according to Kempfer's
description, Aracen, Exot, jp, 193,
This gives us a clear idea of the D^n ijbs, raentioned in
the first Psalm, and other places of Scripture, " the divi
sions of waters," the waters distributed in artificial canals-;
for so the phrase properly signifies. The prophet Jeremiah
has imitated, and elegantly amplified, the passage of the
Psalmist above referred to : —
" He shall be like a tree planted by the water-side,
And which sendeth forth her roots to the aqueduct :
She shaU not fear, when the heat cometh ;
But her leaf shall be green ;
And in the year of drought she shall not be anxious,
Neither shall she cease from bearing fruit," Jer, xvii, 8.

Chap. I. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 147
From this iraage the son of Sirach has raost beautifuUy
iUustrated the influence and the increase of religious wisdom
in a well-prepared heart : —
" I also come forth as a canal from a river,
And as a conduit flowing into a paradise.
I said : I will water my garden,
And I will abundantly moisten my border :
And lo ! my canal became' a river,
And my river became a sea," Eccl'us, xxiv. 30, 31,
This gives us the true meaning of the foUowing elegant
proverb : —
" The heart of the king is like the canals of waters in the hand
of Jehovah ;
Whithersoever it pleaseth him, he inclineth it," Prov, xxi, 1,
The direction of it is in the hand of Jehovah, as the distri
bution of the water of the reservoir, through the garden, by
different canals, is at the vrill of the gardener : —
" Et, quum exustus ager morientibus aastuat herbis,
Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam
Elicit : ilia cadens raucum per levia murmur
Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva," Virg, Georg, i, 107,
Solomon mentions his own works of this kind : —
" I made me gardens, and paradises;
And I planted in them all kinds of fruit-trees,
I made me pools of water,
To water with them the grove flourishing with trees,"
Eccles, ii, 5. 6.
Maundrell (p, 88. ) has given a description of the remains, as
they are said to be, of these very pools made by Solomon,
for the reception and preservation of the waters of a spring,
rising at a Uttle distance frora them; which will give us a
perfect notion of the contrivance and design of such reser
voirs. " As for the pools, they are three in number, lying
in a row above each other ; being so disposed, that the waters
of the uppermost may descend into the second, and those of
the second into the third. Their figure is quadrangular ;
the breadth is the sarae in all, araounting to about ninety
paces : in their length there is some difference between them ;
the first being one hundred and sixty paces long ; the se
cond two hundred; the third two hundred and twenty.
They are all lined with wall, and plastered ; and contain a
great depth of water."

148 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. L
The immense works which were made by the ancient
kings of Egypt, for receiving the waters of the Nile when
it overflowed, for such uses, are well known. But there
never was a more stupendous work of this kind, than the
reservoir of Saba, or Merab, in Arabia Felix, According
to the tradition of the country, it was the work of Balkis,
that queen of Sheba who visited Solompn, It was a vast
lake formed by the collection of the waters of a torrent in
a valley, where, at a narrow pass between two mountains, a
very high mole, or dam, was buUt, The water of the lake
so forraed had near twenty fathom depth ; and there were
three sluices at different heights, by which, at whatever
height the lake stood, the plain below might be watered.
By conduits and canals from these sluices the water was
constantly distributed in due proportion to the several lands;
so that the whole country for many mUes became a perfect
paradise. The city of Saba, or Merab, was situated imme-r
diately below the great dam : a great flood came, and raised
the lake above its usual height : the dam gave way in the
middle of the night; the waters burst forth at once, and
overwhelmed the whole city, with the neighbouring towns,
and people. The remains of eight tribes were forced to '
abandon their dwelling, and the beautiful vaUey became a
morass and a desert. This fatal catastrophe happened long
before the time of Mohammed, who mentions it in the
Koran, chap, xxxiv. See also Sale, Prelim, sect, i, ; and
Michaelis, Questions aux Voyageurs Danois, No, 94, ; Nie^-
buhr, Descript, de I'Arabie, p, 240.

CHAPTER IL
The prophecy contained in the second, third, and fourth
chapters, makes one continued discourse. The first five
verses of chapter second foretell the kingdora of Messiah,
the conversion of the GentUes, and their admission into it.
Frora the sixth verse to the end of the second chapter is fore
told the punishment of the unbelieving Jews, for their idola
trous practices, their confidence in their own strength, and
distrust of God's protection ; and moreover the destruction
of idolatry, in consequence of the establishment of Messiah's
kingdom. The whole third chapter, with the first verse of
the fourth, is a prophecy of the calamities of the Babylonian

Chap. IL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 149
invasion and captivity; with a particular amplification of
the distress of the proud and luxurious daughters of Sion.
Chap. iv. 2 — 6. proraises to the reranant, which shall have
escaped this severe purgation, a future restoration to the
favour and protection of God.
This prophecy was probably delivered in the tirae of
Jotham, or perhaps in that of Uzziah ; as Isaiah is said to
have prophesied in his reign ; to which time not any of his
prophecies is so applicable as that of these chapters. The
seventh verse of the second, and the latter part of the third
chapter, plainly point out times in which riches abounded,
and luxury and delicacy prevailed. Plenty of silver and
gold coidd only arise from their commerce; particularly
from that part of it which was carried on by the Red Sea,
This circumstance seems to confine the prophecy within the
limits above raentioned, while the port of Elath was in their
hands : it was lost under Ahaz, and never recovered,
2, — in the latter days — ] ".Wherever the latter times
are raentioned in Scripture, the days of the Messiah are
always meant;" says Kimchi on this place: and, in regard
to this place, nothing can be more clear and certain. The
Prophet Micah (chap, iv, 1 — 4,) has repeated this prophecy
of the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, and of its
progress to universality and perfection, in the sarae words,
with little and hardly any material variation : for as he did
not begin to prophesy till Jotham' s time, and this seems to
be one of the first of Isaiah's prophecies, I suppose Micah
to have taken it frora hence. The variations, as I said, are
of no great importance. Verse 2, xm after xu;:i, a word
of some emphasis, raay be supplied frora Micah, if dropt
in Isaiah : an ancient MS has it here in the margin : It has
in like manner been lost in chap, liii, 4, (see note on the
place) ; and in Psal, xxii, 29, where it is supplied by Syr,
and LXX, Instead of siun ba, all the nations, Micah
has only Dinjr, peoples ,- where Syr, has D''J3y ba, all jJeoples,
as probably it ought to be. Verse 3, for the 2d bx read
bxi, seventeen MSS, two editions, LXX, Vulg, Syr, Chald,
and so Micah iv, 2, Verse 4, Micah adds, pm ir, afar
off, which the Syriac also reads in this parallel place of
Isaiah, It is also to be observed, that Micah has improved
the passage by adding a verse, or sentence, for imagery and
expression worthy even of the elegance of Isaiah : —
o

150

NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IL

" And they shall sit, every man under his vine.
And under his fig-tree, and none shall affright them :
.For the mouth of Jehovah God of Hosts hath spoken it,"
The description of weU-established peace, by the image of
" beating their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks," is very poetical. The Roman poets have
employed the same image : Martial, xiv, 34, " Falx ex ense,"
" Pax me certa ducis placidos curvavit in usus j •
Agricolae nunc sum ; militis ante fui,"
The Prophet Joel hath reversed it, and appUed it to war
prevaUing over peace : —
" Beat your ploughshares into swords ;
And your pruning-hooks into spearg," Joel, iii, 10,
And so likewise the Roman poets : —
" Non uUus aratro
Dignus honos : squalent abductis arva colonis,
Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem," Virg, Georg, i, 506.
" Bella diu tenuere viros : erat aptior ensis
Vomere : cedebat taurus arator equo,
Sarcula cessabant ; versique in pila ligones ;
Factaque de rastri pondere cassis erat," Ovid. Fast. i. 697.
The Prophet Ezekiel has presignified the same great event
with equal clearness, though in a more abstruse form, in an
allegory ; from an iraage, suggested by the former part of
the prophecy, happily introduced, and well pursued : —
" Thus saith the Lord Jehovah :
I myself will take from the shoot of the lofty cedar;
Even a tender cion from the top^of his cions will 1 pluck off:
And I myself will plant it on a mountain high and eminent.
On the lofty mountain of Israel will I plant it ;
And it shall exalt its branch and bring forth fruit ;
And it shall become a majestic cedar:
And under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing ;
In the shadow of its branches shall they dwell :
And all the trees of the field shall know,
That I Jehovah have brought low the high tree ;
Have exalted the low tree ;
Have dried up the green tree ;
And have made the dry tree to flourish :
I Jehovah have spoken it, and will do it." Ezek. xvii. 22-24.
The word 'Driai in this passage, verse 22. as the sentence
now stands, seems incapable of being reduced to any proper

Chap. II. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 151
construction or sense ; none of the ancient versions acknow
ledge it, except Theodotion and Vulg.; and all but the
latter vary very rauch from the present reading of this
clause, fioubigant's correction of the passage, by reading,
instead of ''nnii, tip2Vl, (and a tender cion), which is not
very unlike it, (perhaps better pavi, vrith which the adjec
tive "]1 will agree without alteration), is ingenious and pro
bable ; and I have adopted it in the above translation.
6. they are filled with diviners — ] Heb. They are filled
from the east ; or, more than the east. The sentence is ma
nifestly imperfect. The LXX, Vulg. and Chaldee, seem
to have read Dipna ; and the latter, with another word be
fore it signifying idols .- They are filled with idols as from of
old. Houbigant for Dlpa reads DDpn, as Brentius had
proposed long ago. I rather think, that both words to
gether give us the true reading: Dipn DDpn, with divina
tion from the east ; and that the first word has been by mis
take omitted, from its similitude to the second.
Ibid. And they multiply — ] Seven MSS and one edition
read ip^SD*, " Read iniSD*; and have joined themselves to
the children of strangers ; that is, in marriage, or worship,"
Dr Jubb, So Vulg, adhceserunt. Compare chap, xiv, 1,
But the very learned professor Chevalier Michaelis has
explained the word inSD*, Job, xxx, 7, (German transla
tion, note on the place) in another manner; which perfectly
well agrees with that place, and perhaps will be found to
give as good a sense here, n'SD, the noun, means corn
springing up, not from the seed regularly sown on cultivated
land, but in the untilled field, from the scattered grains of
the former harvest. This, by an easy metaphor, is applied
to a spurious brood of chUdren irregularly and casually be
gotten. The LXX seem to have understood the verb here
in this sense, reading it as Vulg, seeras to have done : this
justifies their version, which it is hard to account for in any
other manner : "«( nxia, waxxx atxxopvxn lymh Kvroig. Cora-
pare Hos. V. 7, and LXX there,
7, And his land is filled with horses] This was in direct
contradiction to God's command in the law : " But he [the
king] shall not multiply horses to hiraself; nor cause the
people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should mul
tiply horses : — neither shall he greatly multiply to liimself
silver ~ and gold:" Deut, xvii, 16, 17, Uzziah seems to
have foUowed the example of Solomon, (see 1 Kings x. 26,

152 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chai«. IL
--29,), who first transgressed in these particulars: he re
covered the port of Elath on the Red Sea, and with it that
commerce, which, in Solomon's days, had " made silver and
gold as plenteous at Jerusalem as stones :" 2 Chron, i. 15.
He had an army of 307,500 men; in which, as we may
infer from this testimony of Isaiah, the chariots and horse
made a considerable part, " The law above-mentioned
was to be a standing trial of prince and people, whether
they had trust and confidence in God their deliverer," See
Bp, Sherlock's Discourses on Prophecy, Dissert, iv, where
he has excellently explained the reason and effect of the
law, and the influence which the observance or neglect of it
had on the affairs of the Israelites,
8, And his land is filed with idols] Uzziah and Jotham
are both said (2 Kings xv. 3, 4. and 34, 35.) " to have
done that which was right in the sight of the Lord ;" (that
is, to have adhered to, and maintained, the legal worship of
God, in opposition to idolatry, and all irregular worship;
for to this sense the meaning of that phrase is commonly to
be restrained) ; " save that the high places were not removed,
where the people still sacrificed and burned incense." There
was. hardly any time when they were quite free from this
irregular and unlawful practice ; which they seem to have
looked upon as very consistent with the true worship of
God ; and which seems in some measure to have been tole
rated, while the tabernacle was removed from place to place,
and before the temple was built. Even after the conversion
of Manasseh, when he had removed the strange gods, and
commanded Judah to serve Jehovah the God of Israel;
it is added, " Nevertheless the people did sacrifice still on
the high places, yet unto Jehovah their God only:" 2
Chron. xxxiii. 17. The worshipping on the high places
therefore does not necessarily imply idolatry: and from
what is said of these two kings, Uzziah and Jotham, we may
presume, that the public exercise of idolatrous worship was
not permitted in their time. The idols therefore here spoken
of, must have been such as were designed for a private and
secret use. Such probably were the Teraphim so often
mentioned in Scripture; a kind of household gods, of human
form, as it should seem, (see 1 Sam, xix, 13, and compare
Gen, xxxi, 34,), of different magnitude, used for idolatrous
and superstitious purposes ; particularly for divination, and
as oracles, which they consulted for direction in their affairs.

Chap. IL NOTES ON ISAIAH.
9, — shall be bowed down] This has reference tox^
preceding verse : they bowed theraselves down to their idols ;
therefore shaU they be bowed down ahd brought low under
the avenging hand of God,
10, Whe?i he ariseth to strike the earth with terror.] On
the authority of LXX, confirraed by the Arabic and an
ancient MS," I have here added to the text a line, which
in the 19th and 21st verses is repeated together with the
preceding line, and has, I think, evidently been oraitted by
mistake in this place. The MS here varies only in one
letter from the reading of the other two verseS: it has \>ixa
instead of yixn,
11, — be humbled] " For nwi bsw, read ntsi ibsiz;,"
Dr Durell, Which rectifies the grararaatical construction,
13 — 16, Even against all the cedars — ] These verses
afford us a striking exaraple of that peculiar way of writing,
which raakes a principal characteristic of the parabolical or
poetical style of the Hebrews, and in which then- prophets
deal so largely; naraely, their manner of exhibiting things
divine, spiritual, moral, and political, by a set of images taken
from things natural, artificial, religious, historical ; in the way
of metaphor or allegory. Of these, nature furnishes much
the largest and the most pleasing share ; and aU poetry has
chiefly recourse to natural images, as the richest and raost
powerful source of illustration. But it may be observed
of the Hebrew poetry in particular, that in the use of such
iraages, and in the application of thera in the way of iUus-
tration and ornament, it is raore regular and constant than
any other poetry whatever ; that it has, for the most part, a
set of images appropriated in a manner to the explication of
certain subjects. Thus you will find, in many other places
beside this before us, that cedars of Libanus and oaks of
Basan are used, in the way of metaphor and allegory, for
kings, princes, potentates, of the highest rank ; high moun
tains and lofty hUls, for kingdoms, republics, states, cities ;
towers and fortresses, for defenders and protectors, whether
by counsel or strength, in peace or war; ships of Tar
shish, and works of art and invention employed in adorning
them, for merchants, men enriched by commerce, and
abounding in all the luxuries and elegancies of life ; such as
those of Tyre and Sidon : for it appears from the course of
the whole passage, and from the train of ideas, that the
fortresses and the ships are to be taken metaphorically, as
well as the high trees and the lofty mountains.

154 NOTES OJST ISAIAH. Chap. II.
Ships of Tarshish are in Scripture frequently used by a
metonymy for ships in general, especially such as are em
ployed in carrying on traffic between distant countries ; as
Tarshish was the most celebrated mart of those times, frcr-
quented of old by the Phenicians, and the principal source
of Wealth to Judea and the neighbouring countries. The
learned seem now to be perfectly well agreed, that Tarshish
is Tartessus, a city of Spain, at the mouth of the river
Bsetis ; whence the Phenicians, who first opened this trade,
brought silver and gold, (Jer. x, 9, Ezek, xxrii, 12,), in
which that country then abounded; and pursuing their
voyage still further to the Cassiterides, (Bochart, Canaan,
I, cap, 39, Huet, Hist, de Commerce, p, 194,), the islands of
Scilly and CornwaU, they brought from thence lead and tin,
Tarshish is celebrated in Scripture (2 Chron, viii, 17,
18, ix, 21.) for the trade which Solomon carried on thither,
in conjunction with the Tyrians. Jehosaphat (1 Kings
xxii. 48. 2 Chron. xx. 36.) attempted afterward to renew
that trade ; and from the account given of his atterapt it
appears, that his fleet was to saU frpm Eziongeber on the
Red Sea : they must therefore have designed to sail round
Africa, as Solomon's fleet probably had done before, (see
Huet, Histoire de Coraraerce, p. 32.) ; for it was a three
years' voyage, (2 Chron, ix, 21,) ; and they brought gold
from Ophir, probably on the coast of Arabia, silver from
Tartessus, and ivory, apes, and peacocks, from Africa,
" i''Slx, Afri, Africa, the Roman termination, Africa terra,
lyiwin, some city, or country, in Africa, So Chald, on 1
Kings xxii, 49, where he renders w>win by np»isx; and
compare 2 Chron, xx, 36, from whence it appears, that to
go to Ophir and to Tarshish is one and the same thing,"
Dr Jubb, It is certain, that under Pharaoh Necho, about
two hmidred years afterward, this voyage was made by the
Egyptians, (Herodot. iv. 42.) They sailed frora the Red
Sea, and returned by the Mediterranean, and they perform
ed it in three years; .just the same time that the voyage
under Solomon had taken up. It appears likewise from
Pliny, (Nat. Hist. ii. 67.), that the passa;ge round the Cape
pf Good Hope was known and frequently practised before
his time ; by Hanno the Carthaginian, when Carthage was
in its glory ; by one Eudoxus, in the time of Ptolemy La
thyrus king of Egypt; and CaeUus Antipater, an historian,
of good credit, somewhat earUer than Pliny, testifies, that

Chap. IL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 155
he had seen a merchant, who had made the voyage, from
Gades to .Ethiopia. The Portuguese under Vasco de
Gama, near three hundred years ago, recovered this navi
gation, after it had been intermitted and lost for many
centuries. 18. — shall disappear] The ancient versions, and an an
cient MS, read isbns plural.
19 — 21. into caverns of rocks — ] The country pf Judea,
being mountainous and rocky, is full of caverns ; as it ap
pears from the history of Darid's persecution under Saul.
At Engedi, in particular, there was a cave so large, that
David with six hundred men hid themselves in the sides of
it ; and Saul entered the mouth of the cave without per
ceiving that any one was there : 1 Sara. xxiv. Josephus
(Antiq. lib. xiv. cap. 15. ; and Bell. Jnd. Ub. L cap. 16.)
tells us of a numerous gang of banditti, who, having in
fested the country, and being pursued by Herod with his
array, retired into certain caverns, almost inaccessible, near
Arbela in Galilee, where they were with great difficulty sub
dued, Sorae of these were natural, others artificial, " Be
yond Damascus," says Strabo, lib, xvi, " are two mountains
called Trachones ; [from which the country has the name
of Trachonitis] : and from hsnc^, towards Arabia and Itu-
rea, are certain rugged mountains, in which there are deep
caverns; one of which will hold four thousand men," Taver
nier (Voyage de Perse, Part II, chap, 4,) speaks of a grot,
between Aleppo and Bir, that would hold near three thou
sand horse, " Three hours distant from Sidon, about a
mUe from the sea, there runs along a high rocky mountain ;
in the sides of which are hewn a multitude of grots, all very
little differing from each other. They have entrances about
two feet square : on the inside, you find in most or all of
them a room of about four yards square. There are of
these subterraneous caverns two hundred in nuraber. It
may, with probabUity at least, be concluded that these places
were contrived for the use of the living, and not of the dead.
Strabo describes the habitations of the Troglodytae to have
been somewhat of this kind:" Maundrell, p. 118. The
Horites, who dwelt in Mount Seir, were Troglodytes, as
their name D*in imports. But those mentioned by Strabo
were on each side of the Arabian Gulf. Mohammed (Ko
ran, chap, XV, and xxvi,) speaks of a tribe of Arabians, the
tribe of Thamud, " who hewed houses out of the mountains,

156 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IL
to secure themselves," Thus, " because of the Midianites,
the chUdren of Israel made them the dens which are in the
mountains, and caves, and strongholds :" Judges, vi, 2, To
these they betook theraselves for refuge in times of distress
and hostile invasion : " When the men of Israel saw that
they were in a strait, (for the people were distressed), then
the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets,
and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits :" * 1 Sam,
xiii, 6, and see Jer, xli, 9. Therefore, " to enter into the
rock ; to go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves
of the earth," was to thera a very proper and familiar image
to express terror and consternation. The Prophet Hosea
hath carried the same image further, and added great
strength and spirit to it : Chap. x. 8.
" They shall say to the mountains, Cover us ;
And to the hills, Fall on us."
Wliich image, together with these of Isaiah, is adopted by
the sublime author of the Revelation, (chap, vi, 15, 16,),
who frequently borrows his imagery from our Prophet,
20, — which they have made to worship — ] The word
^h, for himself, is omitted by an ancient MS, and is un
necessary. It does not appear that any copy of LXX has
it, except MS Pachom, and MS i. D, ii, and they have
lauroii, Dnb, plural.
Ibid, — to the moles — ] They shall carry their idols with
them into the dark caverns, old ruins, or desolate places, to
which they shall flee for refuge ; and so shall give them up,
and relinquish them to the filthy animals that frequent such
places, and have taken possession of them as their proper
habitation. Bellonius, Greaves, P. Lucas, and many other
travellers, .speak of bats of an enormous size as inhabiting
the great Pyramid, See Harmer, Obser, vol, ii, 455. Three
MSS express misisn, the moles, as one word.

CHAPTER IIL
1. Every stay and support — ] Heb, " the support mas
culine, and the support feminine ;" that is, every kind of
support, whether great or sraall, strong or weak : " Al
kariitz, wal-kanitzah ,- the wUd beast, male and female : Pro
verbially applied both to fishing and hunting ; i. e. I seized
the prey, great or little, good or bad, Frora bence, as

Chap. III. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 157
Schultens observes, is explained Isa, iii, 1, literally the male
and female stay .- i. e. the strong and' weak, the great and
sraall," Chappelow, note on Hariri, Assembly I, Compare
Eccles, ii, 8,
The two following verses, 2, 3, are very clearly explained
by the sacred historian's account pf the event, the captivity
of Jehoiachin by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon : " And
he carried away aU Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all
the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and
aU the craftsmen and smiths : none remained, save the poor
est sort of the people of the land :" 2 Kings xxiv, 14,
4, I will make boys their princes — ] This also was fully
accomplished in the succession of weak and wicked princes,
from the death of Josiah to the destruction of the city and
temple, and the taking of Zedekiah, the last of them, by
Nebuchadnezzar, 6, — of his father' s house.] For riu, the ancient inter
preters seem to have read n^an : tb ojxsia t» smteiii avrn -,
LXX : doraesticum patris sui ; Vulg, which gives no good
sense, (ButLXX, MS i, D, ii, for oixsis, hasoixa.) AnA,his
brother, of his father's house, is little better than a tautology,
"The case seeras to require, that the man should apply to a
person of some sort of rank and eminence ; one that was
the head of his father's house, (see Josh, xxii, 14,); Whether
of the house of him who applies to hira, or of any other ;
iiax n^a ii?xi, I cannot help suspecting, therefore, that
the word iwxi has been lost out of the text.
Ibid, — saying — ] Before nbaii;, garment, two MSS (one
ancient), and the Babylonish Talraud, have the word inxb :
and so LXX, Vulg, Syr, Chald, I place it, with Houbi
gant, after nbaii;.
Ibid, — take by the garment.] That is, shall entreat hira
in an hurable and supplicating manner, " Ten men shall
take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew ; saying, Let
us go with you ; for we have heard that God is with you :"
Zech, viii, 23, And so in Isaiah, chap, iv, 1, the same
gesture is used, to express earnest and hurable entreaty.
The behaviour of Saul towards Samuel was of the same
kind, when he laid hold on the skirt of his raiment : 1 Sara,
XV, 27, The preceding and following verses shew, that his
whole deportment, in regard to the prophet, was full of
subraission and humility.
Ibid, And let thy hand support — ] Before tti nnn a

158 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap, IIL
MS adds n^nn ; another MS adds in the same place ni*a
npn, which latter seems to be a various reading of the two
preceding words, making a very good sense; " take into
thy hand our ruinous state," Twenty-one MSS, and three
editions, and the Babylonish Talmud, have ^n^ plural,
7, Then shall he openly declare — ] The LXX, Syr, and
Jerom, read xw^i, adding the conjunction ; which seems
necessary in this place.
Ibid, For in my home is neither bread nor raiment.]
" It is customary through aU the East," says Sir J, Chardin,
" to gather together an imraense quantity of furniture and
clothes ; for their fashions never alter," Princes and great
men are obliged to have a great stock of such things in
readiness for presents upon all occasions, " The kings of
Persia," says the sarae author, " have great wardrobes,
where there are always many hundreds of habits ready, de
signed for presents, and sorted," Harmer, Observ, ii, 11,
and 88, A great quantity of provision for the table was
equally necessary. The daily provision for Solomon's house
hold, whose attendants were exceedingly numerous, was
proportionably great: 1 Kings, iv, 22, 23. Even Nehe
miah, in his strait circumstances, had a large supply daily
for his table ; at which were received an hundred and fifty
of the Jews and rulers, beside those that came frora among
the neighbouring heathens : Neh. v. 17, 18,
This explains the meaning of the excuse made by him
that is desired to undertake the government : he alleges,
that he has not wherewithal to support the dignity of the
station, by such acts of liberality and hospitality as the law
of custom required of persons of superior rank. See Har
mer's Observations, i, 340, ii, 88,
8, — the cloud] This word appears to be of very doubt
ful form, from the printed editions, the MSS, and the an
cient versions. The first jod in *a^r, which is necessary
according to the common interpretation, is in many of them
omitted : the two last letters are upon a rasure in two MSS,
I think it should be pi?, as the Syriac reads ; and that the
aUusion is to the cloud, in which the glory of the Lord
appeared above the tabernacle. See Exod, xvi, 9, 10, xl,
34—38, Numb, xvi, 41, 42,
10, Pronounce ye — ] The reading of this verse is very
dubious. The LXX for 11?3X read 1DX3 ; or both, 1DN3
1112X : and ub aita xb '•a, hvi<ru(»,ii rev ^mxttv, in JixTp^jUfes »|K"

Chap. III. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 159
ts-f. Perhaps, for llnx, the true reading may be 11WX, bless
ye: or ^iwx iinx, say ye, blessed is — , Vulg, and an ancient
MS read, in the singular number, baxs comedet.
12, Pervert] lyba, swallow. Among many unsatisfac
tory methods of accounting for the unusual meaning of this
word in this place, I chose Jarchi's explication, as making
the best sense, " Read ibba, confound. Syr," Dr Jubb,
" Read ibna, disturb, or tremble." Secker, So LXX,
13, — his people] inr, LXX,
14, — my vineyard] ijiia, LXX, Chald, Jerom,
15, And grind the faces] The expression and the iraage
is strong, to denote grievous oppression ; but is exceeded by
the prophet Micah :
" Hear, I pray you, ye chiefs of Jacob ;
And ye princes of the house of Israel :
Is it not yours to know what is right ?
Ye that hate good, and love evil :
'Who tear their skin from off them ;
And their flesh from off their bones :
'Who devour the flesh of my people ;
And flay from off them their skin :
And their bones they dash in pieces ;
And chop them asunder, as morsels for the pot ;
And as flesh thrown into the midst of the cauldron."
Micah, iii. 1 — 3,
In the last line but one, for lii>xa, read, by the transposition
ofa letter, ixira, with the LXX, and Chald,
16, And falsely setting off their eyes with paint] Heb,
falsifying their eyes, I take this to be the true meaning
and literal rendering of the word; from '^'^xil• The Maso
retes have pointed it, as if it were from ipb, a different
word. This arose, as I imagine, frora their supposing that
the word was the same with ipD, Chald, intueri, innuere
oculis ; or that it had an affinity with the noun xipio,
which the Chaldeans, or the Rabbins at least, use for sti
bium, the mineral which was commonly used in colouring
the eyes. See Jarchi's comment on the place. Though
the colouring of the eyes with stibium be not particularly
here expressed, yet I suppose it to be impUed : and so the
Chaldee paraphrase explains it ; " stibio linitis oculis."
This fashion seeras to have prevailed very generally araong
the eastern people in ancient times; and they retain the
very same to this day.

160 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IIL
Pietro della Valle, giving a description of his wife, an
Assyrian lady, born in Mesopotamia, and educated at
Baghdad, whom he married in that country, (Viaggi, tom.
i. lettera 17.), says, " Her eye-lashes, which are long, and,
according to the custom of the East, dressed with stibium,
(as we often read in the Holy Scriptures of the Hebrew
women of old, Jer. iv. 30. Ezek. xxiii. 40. ; and in Xeno-
phon of Astyages the grandfather of Cyrus, and of the
Medes of that time, Cyropsed. lib. i.), give a dark, and at
the same tirae a majestic shade to the eyes." " Great eyes
(says Sandys, Travels, p. 67., speaking of the Turkish
women) they have in principal repute ; and of those, the
blacker they be, the more amiable : insomuch that they put
between the eye-lids and the eye a certain black powder,
with a fine long pencil, made of a mineral brought from the
kingdom of Fez, and called alcohole -, which by the not dis
agreeable staining of the lids, doth better set forth the white
ness of the eye ; and though it be troublesonie for a time,
yet it comforteth the sight, and repelleth ill humours."
" Vis ejus [stibii] astringere ac refrigerare, principalis autem
circa oculos ; namque ideo etiam plerique Platyophthalmon
id appellavere, quoniam in calliblepharis mulierum dilatat
oculos ; et fluxiones inhibet oculorum exulcerationesque."
Plin. Nat. Hist, xxxiu. 6.
" llle supercilium madida fuligine tinctum
Obliqua producit acu, pingitque trementes
AttoUens oculos." Juv. Sat. ii. 92.
" But none of those [Moorish] ladies," says Dr Shaw,
(Travels, p. 294. fol.), " take themselves to be completely
dressed, till they have tinged the hair and edges of their
eye-lids with al-kahol, the powder of lead ore. This opera
tion is performed by dipping first into the powder a small
wooden bodkin of the thickness of a quill, and then draw
ing it afterwards through the eye-lids, over the ball of the
eye." Ezekiel (xxiii. 40.) uses the same word in the form
of a verb, Ti^T nbna, " thou didst dress thine eyes with
al-cahol ;" which the LXX render eriSi^s ts; o(p6xXftys e-n,
" thou didst dress thine eyes with stibium " just as they do
when the word "[is is employed: (compare 2 Kings ix. 30,
Jer, iv, 30,) : they supposed therefore, that ^1S and bna, or,
in the Arabic form, al-cahol, meant the same thing; and
probably the mineral used of old, for this purpose, was the
same that is used now; which Dr Shaw (Ibid, note) says,

Chap. IIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 161
is " a rich lead ore, pounded into an impalpable powder."
Alcoholados ; the word niipwn, in this place, is thus ren
dered in an old Spanish translation. Sanctius, See also
RusseU's Nat, Hist, of Aleppo, p, 1 02,
The following inventory, as one raay call it, of the ward
robe of a Hebrew lady, raust, from its antiquity, and from
the nature of the subject, have been very obscure, even to
the most ancient interpreters which we have of it ; and,
from its obscurity, must have been also peculiarly liable to
the mistakes of transcribers : however, it is rather matter of
curiosity than of importance; and indeed it is, upon the
whole, more intelUgi'ble, and less corrupted, than one might
have reasonably expected, Clemens Alexandrinus ( Psedag,
iib, ii, cap, 12,) and JuUus Pollux (lib, vii, cap, 22,) have
each of them preserved, from a comedy of Aristophanes,
now lost, a simUar catalogue of the several parts of the dress
and ornaments of a Grecian lady ; which though much more
capable of illustration from other writers, though of later
date, and quoted and transmitted down to us by two dif
ferent authors ; yet seems to be much less intelUgible, and
considerably more corrupted, than this passage of Isaiah,
Salmasius has endeavoured, by comparing the two quota
tions, and by much critical conjecture and learned disquisi
tion, to restore the true reading, and to explain the particu
lars ; with what success, I leave to the determination of the
learned reader, whose curiosity shall lead him to compare
the passage of the comedian with this of the Prophet, and
to examine the critic's learned labours upon it, Exercit,
Plinian, p, 1148,; or see Clem, Alex, as cited above, edit.
Potter, where the passage as corrected by Salraasius is given,
Nich, Guil, Schroederus, professor of Oriental languages
in the university of Marpurg, has published a very learned
and judicious treatise upon this passage of Isaiah, The
title of it is, " Commentarius Philologico-Criticus De Ves-
titu Mulierum Hebraearum ad lesai, iii, ver, 16 — 24, Lugd,
Bat, 1745," 4to, As I think no one has handled this sub
ject, with so rauch judgraent and ability as this author, I
have for the raost part followed hira, in giving the explana
tion of the several terras denoting the different parts of dress,
of which this passage consists ; signifying the reasons of ray
dissent, where he does not give me fuU satisfaction,
17, — will the Lord humble — ] TxTtumirii, LXX; and so
Syr, and Chald, For nsw they read bsw.

162 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IIL
Ibid. — expose their nakedness] It was the barbarous
custom of the conquerors of those times to strip their cap
tives naked, and to make them travel in that condition,
exposed to the inclemency of the weather ; and, the worst
of all, to the intolerable heat of the sun. But this to the
women was the height of cruelty and indignity ; and espe
cially to such as those here described, who had indulged
themselves in all manner of deUcacies of living, and all the
superfluities of ornamental dress ; and even whose faces had
hardly ever been exposed to the sight of man. This is al
ways mentioned as the hardest part of the lot of captives,
Nahum, denouncing the fate of Nineveh, paints it in very
strong colours :
" Behold, I am against thee, saith Jehovah God of Hosts :
And I will discover thy skirts upon thy face ;
And I will expose thy nakedness to the nations ;
And to the kingdoms thy shame.
And I will throw ordures upon thee ;
And I will make thee vile, and set thee as a gazing-stock."
Nahum, iii. 5, 6.
18. — the ornaments of the feet-rings — ] The late learn
ed Dr Hunt, professor of Hebrew and Arabic in the uni
versity of Oxford, has very well explained the word Da:f»
both verb and noun, in his very ingenious Dissertation on
Prov. vii. 22, 23. The verb means to skip, to bound, to
dance along; and the noun, those ornaments of the feet
which the eastern ladies wore; chains, or rings, which
made a tinkling sound as they moved nimbly in walking.
Eugene Roger, Description de la Terre Sainte, liv. ii.
chap, 2, speaking of the Arabian women of the first rank
in Palestine, says, " Au lieu de brasselets eUes ont de me-
nottes d'argent, qu'elles portent aux poignets et aux pieds ;
ou sont attachez quantite de petits annelets d'argent, qui
font un cliquetis comme d'une cymbale, lorsqu'elles che-
minent ou se mouvent quelque peu," See Dr Hunt's Dis
sertation ; where he produces other testimonies to the same
purpose from authors of travels.
Ibid, — the net-works] I am obliged to differ from the
learned Schroederus, almost at first setting out: he renders
the word D'^niaw by soliculi, litde ornaments, bullae, or
studs, in shape representing the sun, and so answering to
the foUowing word D''3inw, lumdee, crescents. He supposes
the word to be the same with D^w^nw, the ^ in the second

Chap. III. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 163
syllable making the word diminutive, and the letter n being
dianged for a, a letter of the same organ. How just and
well-founded his authorities for the transmutation of these
letters in the Arabic language are, I cannot pretend to
judge ; but, as I know of no such instance in Hebrew, it
seems to me a very forced etymology. Being dissatisfied
with this account of the matter, I applied to my good
friend above-mentioned, the late Dr Hunt, who very kindly
returned the following answer to my inquiries : —
" I have consulted the Arabic lexicons, as well MS as
printed, but cannot find DiD^au; in any of them, nor any
thing belonging to it. So that no help is to be had from
that language towards clearing up the meaning of this dif
ficult word. But what the Arabic denies, the Syriac per
haps raay afford; in which I find the verb lyaur to entangle,
or interweave, an etymology which is equally favourable to
our marginal translation, net-works, with yaur, to make
chequer-work, or embroider, (the word by which Kimchi
and others have explained D'laii;), and has moreover this
advantage over it, that the letters u> and D are very fre
quently put for each other, but s and D scarce ever, Aben
Ezra joins DiD^aiy and D^Dai? (which immediately precedes
it) together; and says, that caii; was the ornament of the
legs, as Day was of the feet. His words are, Dibii bw oar
ma DipiTi? bir taiwan dutu,"
21, The jewels of the nostril — ] t^xn ^nii, Schroederus
explains this, as many others do, of jewels, or strings of
pearl, hanging from the forehead, and reaching to the
upper part of the nose. But it appears frora many passages
of Holy Scripture, that the phrase is to be literally and
properly understood of nose-jewels, rings set with jewels
hanging from the nostrils, as ear-rings from the ears, by
holes bored to receive them,
Ezekiel, enumerating the common ornaments of women
of the first rank, has not omitted this particular, and is to
be understood in the same manner; chap, xvi, 11, 12, (See
also Gen, xxiv, 47,)
" And I decked thee with ornaments ;
And I put bracelets upon thine hands,
And a chain on thy neck :
And I put a jewel on thy nose.
And ear-rings on thine ears.
And a splendid crown upon thine head,"

164 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IIL
And in an elegant proverb of Solomon there is a mani
fest allusion to this kind of ornament, which shews it to
have been used in his time :
" As a jewel set in gold in the snout of a swine ;
So is a woman beautiful, but wanting discretion," Prov, xi, 22,
This fashion, however strange it may appear to us, was
formerly, and is still, common in many parts of the East,
among women of all ranks, Paul Lucas, speaking of a
vUlage, or clan, of wandering people, a little on this side of
the Euphrates; " The women," says he, (2d Voyage du
Levant, tom, i, art, 24,), " almost all of them, travel on foot :
I saw none handsome among them. They have almost all
of them the nose bored, and wear in it a great ring, which
makes them still more deformed," But in regard to this.
custora, better authority cannot be produced than that of
Pietro della Valle, in the account which he gives of the
lady before-mentioned, Signora Maani Gioerida, his own
wife. The description of her dress, as to the ornamental
parts of it, with which he introduces the mention of this
particular, wUl give us some notion of the taste of the eastern
ladies for finery, " The ornaments of gold, and of jewels,
for the head, for the neck, for the arms, for the legs, and
for the feet, (for they wear rings even on their toes), are in
deed, unlike those of the Turks, carried to great excess, but
not of great value ; for in Baghdad jewels of high price
either are not to be had, or are not used ; and they wear
such only as are of little value ; as turquoises, small rubies,
emeralds, carbuncles, garnets, pearls, and the Uke, My
spouse dresses herself with all of them according to their
fashion ; with exception, however, of certain ugly rings of
very large size, set with jewels, which in truth, very absurd
ly, it is the custom to wear fastened to one of their nostrUs,
like buffalos : an ancient custom however in the East, which,
as we find in the Holy Scriptures, prevailed among the
Hebrew ladies even in the time of Solomon : Prov, xi, 22,
These nose-rings in complaisance to me she has left off;
but I have not yet been able to prevail with her cousin and
her sisters to do the same : so fond are they of an old cus
tora, be it ever so absurd, who have been long habituated to
it," Viaggi, tom, i, lett, 17,
23, The transparent garments — ] Diavbin, to, S(«ip«»))
A«K«iv(K«, LXX, A kind of silken dress, transparent, like

Chap. IIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 165
gauze ; worn only by the most delicate women, and such as
dressed themselves " elegantius, quara necesse esset probis,"
This sort of garraents was afterwards in use among the
Greeks, Prodicus, in his celebrated fable (Xenoph, Memo-
rab, Socr, lib, ii,) exhibits the personage of Sloth in this
dress : m-tiiTit Se, £| ii m ft»)^i?-» a>fa JiaAaftsroi.
" Her robe betray'd
Through the clear texture every tender limb,
( Height'ning the charms it only seemed to shade ;'
And as it flow'd adown so loose and thin,
Her stature shew'd more tall, more snowy white her skin,"
They were called Multitia and Coa (sc, vestimenta) by the
Romans, from their being invented, or rather introduced
into Greece, by one Paraphila of the island of Cos, This,
like other Grecian fashions, was received at Rome when
luxury began to prevail under the Emperors ; it was some
times worn even by the men, but looked upon as a mark of
extreme effeminacy : (see Juvenal, Sat. ii. 65, &c.) Publius
Syrus, who lived when the fashion was first introduced, has
given a humorous satirical description of it in two lines,
which by chance have been preserved :
" .ffiquum est, induere nuptam ventum textilem ?
Palam prostare nudam in nebula linea?"
24, Instead of perfume — ] A principal part of the deli
cacy of the Asiatic ladies consists in the use of baths, and of
the richest oils and perfiimes : an attention to which is, in
some degree, necessary in those hot countries. Frequent
mention is made of the rich ointments of the spouse in the
Song of Solomon : —
" How beautiful are thy breasts, my sister, my sppuse I
How much more excellent than wine ;
And the odour of thine ointments than all perfumes 1
Thy lips drop as the honey-comb, my spouse !
Honey and milk are under thy tongue :
And the odour of thy garments is as the odour of Lebanon."
Cant, iv, 10, 11,
The preparation for Esther's being introduced to King
Ahasuerus was a course of bathing and perfuming for a
whole year; " Six months with oil of myrrh, and six
months with sweet odours :" Esth, ii, 12, A diseased and '
loathsome habit of body, instead of a beautiful skin, softened
and made agreeable with all that art could devise, and all
that nature, so prodigal in those countries of the richest per-

166 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IIL
fumes, could supply, must have been a punishment the most
severe, and the most mortifying to the delicacy of these
haughty daughters of Sion,
Ibid, A sun-burnt skin — ] Gaspar Sanctius thinks the
words nnn 13 an interpolation, because the Vulgate has
omitted them. The clause ^si nnn o seems to me rather
to be imperfect at the end. Not to mention that 'a, taken
as a noun, for adustio, burning, is without example, and
very iraprobable : the passage ends abruptly, and, seems to
want a fuller conclusion.
In agreement with which opinion of the defect of the He
brew text in this place, the LXX, according to MSS Pa
chom. and I. D. ii. and Marchal. which are of the best au
thority, express it with the same evident marks of imperfec
tion at the end of the sentence; thus, ta,wx, (rot xm xxhho)viiTfiy
— The two latter add fb. This chasm in the text, from the
loss probably of three or four words, seems therefore to be
of long standing.
Taking ia in its usual sense, as a particle, and supplying
lb from roi of the LXX, it might possibly have been origi-
naUy somewhat in this form : —
;nxi73 n:n ^b ninn 131 nnn ia
" Yea, instead of beauty, thou shalt have an ill-favoured coun
tenance."
131 nnn ia [q. nni] " for beauty shall be destroyed."
Syr. from nnn, or nni. Dr Dukell.
" May it not be ina, " wrinkles instead of beauty?" as ,
from nsi is formed 151 ; from nin, nn, &c. so from nna,
to be wrinkled, ina." Dr Jubb.
25, thy mighty inen — ] For Tniian, an ancient MS has
liia:i. The true reading from LXX, Vulg. Syr. Chald,
seems to be Tiiiaj,
26, — sit on the ground.] Sitting on the ground was a
posture that denoted mourning and deep distress. The
Prophet Jeremiah has given it the first place, among many
indications of sorrow, in the following elegant description of
the same state of distress of his country : —
." The elders of the daughter of Sion sit on the ground, they
are silent :
They have cast up dust on their heads ; they have girded
themselves with sackcloth :
The virgins of Jerusalem have bowed down their heads to
the ground." ^ Lam. ii. 10.

Chap. IIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 167
*' We find Judea," says Mr Addison, (on Medals, Dial, ii.)
" on several coins of "Vespasian and Titus, in a posture that
denotes sorrow and captivity, — I need not mention her sit
ting on the ground, because we have already spoken of the
aptness of such a posture to represent an extreme affliction,
I fancy the Romans might have an eye on the customs of
the Jewish nation, as well as those of their country, in the
several marks of sorrow they have set on this figure. The
Psalmist describes the Jews lamenting their captivity in the
same pensive posture, " By the waters of Babylon we sat
down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Sion," But
what is more remarkable, we find Judea represented as a
woman in sorrow sitting on the ground, in a passage of the
Prophet that foretells the very captivity recorded on this
medal," Mr Addison, I presume, refers to this place of
Isaiah ; and therefore raust have understood it as foretelling
the destruction of Jerusalera and the Jewish nation by the
Romans : whereas it seems plainly to relate, in its first and.
more immediate view at least, to the destruction of the city
by Nebuchadnezzar, and the dissolution of the Jewish state
under the captivity at Babylon,

CHAPTER IV,
1, And seven ivomen — ] The division of the chapters
has interrupted the Prophet's discourse, and broken it off
almost in the midst of the sentence. " The numbers slain
in battle shall be so great, that seven women shall be left to
one man," The Prophet has described the greatness of this
distress by images and adjuncts the most expressive and for
cible. The young women, contrary to their natural modesty,
shall become . suitors to the men : they will take hold of
them, and use the most pressing importunity to be married :
in spite of the natural suggestions of jealousy, they wUl be
content with a share only of the rights of marriage in com
mon with several others; and that on hard conditions, re
nouncing the legal demands of the wife on the husband,
(see Exod, xxi, 10,), and begging only the name and credit
of wedlock, and to be freed from the reproach of celibacy,
(see chap, liv, 4, 5,) Like Marcia, on a different occasion,
and in other circumstances, —
" Da tantum nomen inane
Connubii : liceat tumulo scripsisse, Catonis
Marcia." Lucan. ii. 342.

168 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IV.
Ibid, — in that day — ] These words are omitted in
LXX and MS.
Ibid, The Branch ofjEHOVAH—] The Messiah of Je
hovah, says the Chaldee, The Branch is an appropriated
tide of the Messiah ; and the fruit of the land means the
great Person to spring from the house of Judah, and is
only a parallel expression signifying the same ; or perhaps
the blessings consequent upon, the redemption procured by
him. Compare chap, xlv, 8, where the same great event is
set forth in similar images ; and see the note there.
Ibid. — the house of Israel.] A MS has bxiwi nia.
3. — written among the living.] That is, whose name
stands in the enrolment or register of the people ; or every
man living, who is a citizen of Jerusalem. See Ezek. xiii.
9. where " they shall not be written in the writing of the
house of Israel," is the same with what immediately goes
before, " they shall not be in the assembly of my people."
Compare Psal. Ixxxvii. 6. Ixix. 28. ; Exod. xxxii. 32. To
number and register the people was agreeable to the law of
Moses, and probably was always practised ; being, in sound
policy, useful and even necessary. David's design of num
bering the people was of another kind ; it was to enrol them
for his army. Michaelis, Mosaisches Recht, Part III.
p. 227. See also his Dissert, de Censibus Hebraeorum.
4. " The spirit of burning,"] means the fire of God's
wrath, by which he will prove and purify his people; ga
thering them into his furnace, in order to separate the dross
from the silver, the bad from the good. The severity of
God's judgments, the fiery trial of his servants, Ezekiel
(chap. xxii. 18 — 22.) has set forth at large, after his manner,
with great boldness of imagery and force of expression.
God threatens to gather thera into the midst of Jerusalem,
as into the furnace; to blow the fire upon them, and to
melt thera. Malachi (chap, iii, 2, 3,) treats the same subject,
and represents the same event under the like images : —
" But who may abide the day of his coming?
And who shall stand when he appeareth ?
For he is like the fire of the refiner,
And hke the soap of the fullers.
And he shall sit refining and purifying the silver ;
And he shall purify the sons of Levi,
And cleanse them like gold, and like silver ;
That they may.be Jehovah's ministers,
Presenting unto him an offering in righteousness,"

Chap. IV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 169
5, — the station — ] The Hebrew text has, every station ;
but four MSS (one ancient) omit ba ; very rightly, as it
should seem ; for the station was Mount Sion itself, and no
other. See Exod, xv, 17, And the LXX and MS add die
same -word ba before nixipn, probably right: the word has
only changed its place by mistake, nixipn, " the place
where they were gathered together in their holy assemblies,"
says Sal, b. Melee,
Ibid, A cloud by day — ] This is a manifest aMusion to
the pUlar of a cloud and of fire, which attended the Israelites
in their passage out of Egypt, and to the glory that rested
on the tabernacle, Exod, xiii. 21, xl, 38, The prophet Ze-
chariah appUes the same image to the same purpose : —
" And I will be unto her a wall of fire round about ;
And a glory will I be in the midst of her," Zech, ii,5.
That is, the visible presence of God shall protect her.
Which explains the conclusion of this verse of Isaiah;
where the makkaph between ba and naa, connecting the
two words in construction, which ought not to be connected,
has thrown an obscurity upon the sentence, and misled most
of th^ translators,
.6, And a tabernacle — ] In countries subject to violent
tempests, as well as to intolerable heat, a portable tent is a
necessary part of a traveller's baggage, for defence and
shelter,
CHAPTER V,
This chapter likewise stands single and alone, uncon
nected with the preceding or following, "The subject of it
is nearly the same with that of the first chapter. It is a
general reproof of the Jews for their wickedness : but it ex
ceeds that chapter in force, in severity, in variety, and ele
gance; and it adds a more express declaration of vengeance,
by the Babylonian invasion,
1, Let me sing now a song] A MS, respectable for its
antiquity, adds the word iiiw (a song) after X3 ; which gives
so elegant a turn to the sentence by the repetition of it in the
next member, and by distinguishing the merabers so exactly
in the style and raanner of the Hebrew poetical coraposition,
that I am much inclined to think it genuine.
Ibid, A song of loves] iin, for Dim ; status constructiis
pro absoluto, as the grammarians say, as Micah, vi, 16, ;
Lament, iii, 14, and GQ. ; so Archbishop Secker, Or rather.

170 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. V.
in aU these and the Uke cases, a mistake of the transcribers,
by not observing a smaU stroke, which in many MSS is
made to supply the D of the plural, thus 'iin. Dim niiu>
is the same with mili liw, Psal, xlv, 1, In this way of un
derstanding it, we avoid the gi-eat impropriety of making the
author of the song, and the person to whom it is addressed,
to be the same.
Ibid, On a high and fruitful hill] Heb, " on a horn the
son of oU," The expression is highly descriptive and poe
tical, ' " He caUs the land of Israel a horn, because it is
higher than all. lands ; as the horn is higher than the
whole body: and the son of oil, because it is said to
be a land flowing with milk a,nd honey," Kimchi on the
place. The parts of animals are, by an easy metaphor,
applied to parts of the earth, both in common arid poetical
language, A promontory is called a cape, *Pr head; the
Turks call it a nose, " Dorsum immane mari summo;''
Virg, a back, or ridge of rocks,
" Hanc latus angustum jam se cogentis in arctum
Hesperiae tenuem producit in aequora linguam,
Adriacas flexis claudit quae cornibiis undas."
Lucan, n, 612, of Brundusium, i. e. 'Betmo-ioTi, which, in the
ancient language of that country, signifies stag's-head, says
Strabo, A horn is a proper and obvious image for a mounT
tain, or mountainpus country, Solinus, cap, viii, says,
" Italiam, ubi longius processerit, in cornua duo scindi :"
that is, the high ridge of the Alps, which runs through the
whole length of it, divides at last into two ridges, one going
through Calabria, the other through the country of the
Brutii, " Cornwall is called bj- the inhabitants in the
British tongue Kernaw, as lessening by degrees like a horn,
running out into promontories like so many horns. For
the Britains call a horn corn, in the plural kern .-" Gam^
den. " And Sammes is of opinion, that the country had
this name originally from the Phenicians, who traded hither
for tin ; keren, in their language, being a horn .-" Gibson,
Here the precise idea seems to be that ofa high mountain
standing by itself: " vertex mentis, aut pars mentis ab aUis
divisa;" which signification, says I, H, MichaeUs, (Bibl,
Hallens, Not, in loc) the word has in Arabic,
Judea was in general a mountainous country; whence
Moses sometimes calls it the Mountain :—"• Thou shalt
plant them in the Mountain of thine inheritance ;" Exod,
XV. 17. "I pray thee let me go over, and see the good land

Chap. V. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 171
that is beyond Jordan ; that goodly Mountain, and Leba
non ;" Deut, in, 25, And in a pohtical and religious view
it was detached and separated from all the nations round it.
Whoever has considered the descriptions given of Mount
Ta.bor, (see Reland, Palaestin, ; Eugene Roger, Terre
Sainte, p, 64,), and the views of it which are to be seen in
boolcs of travels, (Maundrell, p, 114, Egmont and Heyman,
vol. u. p, 25, Thevenot, vol, i, p, 429,) ; its regular conic
form, rising singly in a plain to a great height from a base
sraall in proportion ; its beauty and fertUity to the very top ;
will have a good idea of " a horn the son of oil ;" and will
perhaps be induced to think, that the Prophet took his image
from that mountain,
2, and he cleared it from the stones.] This was agreeable
to the ancient husbandry: " Saxa, summa parte terras, et
vites et arbores Itedunt; ima parte, refrigerant;" Colu-
mell, Dfe Arb, 3, " Saxosum facile est expedire lectione
lapidum ;" Id. ii. 2. " Lapides, qui supersunt, [al. insuper
sunt] hieme rigent, sestate fervescunt; idcirco satis, arbustis,
et vitibus nocent ;" Pallad. i. 6. A piece of ground thas
cleared of the stones, Persius, in his hard way of metaphor,
calls " Exossatus ager ;" Sat. vi. 52.
Ibid. Sorek.] Many of the ancient interpreters, LXX,
Aq. Theod. have retained this word as a proper name ; I
think, very rightly. Sorek was a valley lying between As-
cafon and Gaza, and running far up eastward in the tribe
pf Judah. Both Ascalon and Gaza were anciently famous
for wine : the former is mentioned as such by Alexander
Trallianus ; the latter by several authors : (quoted by Re-
land, Falsest, p; 589. and 986.) And it seems, that the
upper part of the valley of Sorek, and that of Eshcol, where
the spies gathered the single cluster of grapes which they
were obliged to bear between two upon a staff, being both
near to Hebron, were in the same neighbourhood ; and that
all this part of the country abounded with rich vineyards.
Compare Numb. xiU. 22, 23. Judg. xvi. 3, 4. P. Nau sup
poses Eshcol and Sorek to be only different names for the
sarae valley : Voyage Nouveau de la Terre Sainte, liv. iv.
chap. 18. So likewise De Lisle's posthumous map of the
Holy Land ; Paris, 1763. See Bochart, Hieroz. ii. col. 725,
Thevenot, i. p. 406. Michaelis (note on Judg. xvi. 4. Ger
man translation) thinks it probable, from some circumstan
ces of the history there given, that Sorek was in the tribe
of Judah, not in the country of the Philistines,

172 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. V.
The vine of Sorek was known to the Israelites, being
mentioned by Moses (Gen, xlix, 11,) before their coming
out of Egypt, Egypt was not a wine country. " Through
out this country there are no wines;" Sandys, p. 101. At
least in very ancient times they had none. Herodotus, ii.
77. says, it had no vines ; and therefore used an artificial
wine made of barley. That is not strictly true ; for the vines
of Egypt are spoken of in Scripture, (Psal. Ixxvin. 47. cv,
33,, and see Gen, xl, 11, by which it should seem, that they
drank only the fresh juice pressed from the grape, which
was called t"o; «fts-sAM05, Herodot, ii, 37.) ; but they had no
large vineyards ; nor was the country proper for them, be
ing little more than one large plain, annually overflowed by
the Nile. The Mareotic in later times is, I think, the only
celebrated Egyptian wine which we meet with in history.
TTie vine was formerly, as Hasselquist tells us it is now,
" cultivated in Egypt for the sake of eating the grapes, not
for wine; which is brought from Candia," &c. " They
were supplied with wine from Greece, and likewise from
Phenicia ;" Herod, in. 6. The vine and the wine of Sorek,
therefore, which lay near at hand for importation into Egypt,
must, in all probability, have Ijeen well known to the Israel
ites when they sojourned there. There is something re
markable in the manner in which Moses makes mention of
it, which, for want of considering this matter, has not been
attended to : It is in Jacob's prophecy of the future prospe
rity of the tribe of Jndah : —
" Binding his foal to the vine,
And his ass's colt to his own Sorek ;
He washeth his raiment in wine.
And his cloak in the blood of grapes." Gen. xlix. 11.
I take the liberty of rendering npny, for ipiiv, his Sorek,
as the Masoretes do of pointing riiiy, for liir, his foal, ii?
might naturally enough appear in the feminine form, but it
is not at all probable that piw ever should. By naming
particularly the rine of Sorek, and as the vine belonging to
Judah, the prophecy intimates the very part of the country
which was to fall to the lot of that tribe. Sir John Chardin
says, " "That at Casbin, a city in Persia, they turn their
cattle into the vineyards, after the vintage, to browse on the
vines." He speaks also of vines in that country, so large
that he could hardly compass the trunks of them with his
,'irms. Voyages, torn. iii. p. 12. 12mo, This shews, that

Chap. V. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 173
the ass might be securely bound to the vine ; and without
danger of damaging the tree by browsing on it.
Ibid, And he built a tower in the midst of it.] Oui- Sa
riour, who has taken the general idea of one of his parables
(Matt, xxi, 33, Mark xii, L) from this of Isaiah, has like
wise inserted this circumstance of building a tower ; which
is generally explained by commentators, as designed for the
keeper of the vineyard to watch and defend the fruits. But
for this purpose it was usual to make a Uttle temporary hut,
(Isa, i. 8,), which might serve for the short season while the
fruit was ripening, and which was removed afterwards. The
tower, therefore, should rather mean a building of a more
permanent nature and use ; the farm, as we may call it, of
the vineyard, containing all the offices and implements, and
the whole apparatus necessary for the culture of the vine
yard, and the making of the wine. To which image in the
allegory, the situation, the manner of building, the use, and
the whole serrice of the temple, exactly answered. And so
the Chaldee paraphrast very rightly expounds it: — " Et
statui eos (Israelitas) ut plantam vineae selectae,^ et aedifi-
cavi sanctuarium meum in medio illorum," So also Hieron,
in loc, " iEdificavit quoque turrim in medio ejus : tem-
plura videlicet in media ciritate," That they have still such
towers or buildings, for use or pleasure, in their gardens in
the East, see Harmer's Observations, ii, p, 241 ,
Ibid, And hewed out a lake therein.] This image also
our Saviour has preserved in his parable, aps LXX ren
der it here ue^ox^nov ; and in four other places v-n-oXrinoti ; Isa,
xvi, 10, Joel, in, 13, Hagg, ii, 17, Zech, xiv, 10.; I think,
more properly : and this latter word St Mark uses. It
means, not the wine-press itself, or calcatorium, which is
called na, or nils, but what the Romans called lacus, the
lake ; the large open place, or vessel, which, by a conduit
or spout, received the must from the wine-press. In very
hot countries it was perhaps necessary, or at least very con
venient, to have the lake under- ground, or in a cave hewed
out of the side of the rock, for coolness ; that the heat might
not cause too great' a fernientation, and sour the must,
" Vini confectio instituitur in cella, vel intimas domus ca
mera quadam, a ventprum ingressu remota :" Kerapfer, of
Schiras wine ; Amoen, Exot, p, 376 : For the hot wind, to
which that country is subject, would injure the wine, '« 'The
wine-presses in Persia," says Sir John Chardin, " are forraed

174 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. V.
by making hollow places in the ground, lined with mason's
work." Harmer's Observations, i, p. 392, See a print of
one in Kerapfer, p, 377, Nonnus describes, at large, Bac
chus hollowing the inside of the rock, and hewing out a place
for the wine-press, or rather the lake : —
Kxi trxoTTiXHf eXx)^ym' -zss^oo-xxipioi; 3e u-iovi^ov
©DyosAsi) yXax,"! fiv^ov xoiXuvxro ttIT^-iis'
AiiTivx! ^t'fi(la-!tx /IxSvuofiivay xiviavaii
Alppov [f. xx^ov. ] iv^atfvMio rvTToy aro»)r«STO X-0ov.
He pierc'd the rock ; and with the sharpen'd tool
Of steel well temper'd, scoop'd its inmost depth :
Then smooth'd the front, and form'd the dark recess
In just dimension for the foaming lake." Dionysiac, lib, xii.
Ibid, And he expected — ] Jeremiah uses the same image,
and applies it to the same purpose, in an elegant paraphrase
of this part of Isaiah's parable, in his flowing and plaintive
manner :
" But I planted thee a Sorek, a cion perfectly genuine :
How then art thou changed, and become to me the degene
rate shoots of the strange vine I" Chap, ii, 21,
Ibid, poisonous berries] Diu>ixa, not merely useless un
profitable grapes, such as wild grapes ; but grapes offensive
to the smell, noxious, poisonous. By the force and intent
of the allegory, to good grapes ought to be opposed fruit
of a dangerous and pernicious quality; as, in the expli
cation of it, to judgment is opposed tyranny, and to right
eousness oppression, \t>i, the vine, is a common name,
or genus, including several species under it; and Moses, to
distinguish the true vine, or that from which wine is made,
from the rest, calls it. Numb, vi, 4, pin \t>i, the wine-vine.
Some of the other sorts were of a poisonous quality ; as ap
pears frora the story related among the miraculous acts of
Elisha, 2 Kings iv, 39 — 41, " And one went out into the
field to gather pot-herbs ; and he found a field-vine : and
he gathered frora it wild fruit, his lapful ; and he went, and
shred thera into the pot of pottage : for they knew them
not. And they poured it out for the men to eat : and it
came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they
cried out, and said. There is death in the pot, O man of
God ! and they could not eat of it. And he said. Bring
meal; (leg, inp, nine MSS, one edition) ; and he threw it
into the pot. And he said. Pour out for the people, that
they may eat. And there was nothing hurtful in the pot."

Chap. V. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 175
From sorae such sorts of poisonous fruits, of the grape
kind, Moses has taken those strong and highly poetical
iraages, with which he has set forth the future corruption
and extreme degeneracy of the Israelites, in an allegory
which has a near relation, both in its subject and imagery,
to this of Isaiah : —
" Their vine is from the vine of Sodom,
And from the fields of Gomorrah :
Their grapes are grapes of gall ;
Their clusters are bitter :
Their wine is the poison of dragons,
And the cruel venom of aspics." Deut. xxxii. 32, 33.
" I am inclined to believe, (says Hasselquist), that the
Prophet here (Isa. v. 2, and 4,) means the hoary night
shade, solanum incanum ,- because it is common in Egypt,
Palestine, and the East ; and the Arabian name agrees well
with it. The Arabs call it aneb el dib, i. e, violf-grapes.
The Prophet could not have found a plant more opposite
to the vine than this ; for it grows much in the vineyards,
and is very pernicious to them ; wherefore they root it out :
it likewise resembles a vine by its shrubby stallc :" Travels,
p, 289, See also Michaelis, Questions aux Voyageurs Da
nois, \No, 64,
3, — inhabitants] laiyi, in the plural number; three
MSS, (two ancient) ; and so likewise LXX and Vulg,
6, - — the thorn shall spring up in it,] A MS has iinwa ;
the true reading seems to be iinur ia : which is confirmed
by LXX, Syr, Vulg,
7, And he looked for judgment — ] The paronomasia, or
play on the words, in this place, is very remarkable : mispat,
mispach ; zedakah, zeakah. There are many examples of it
in the other Prophets ; but Isaiah seems peculiarly fond of it :
see chap, xiii, 6. xxiv. 17. xxvii. 7, xxxiii, 1, Ivii, 6, lxi, 3.
Ixv. 11, 12. The Rabbins esteem it a great beauty: their
term for it is liwbn mnit, " elegance of language."
Ibid. — tyranny] nsii^n, from nsii;, servum fecit, Arab.
Houbigant: nnsii;, is serva, a handmaid,- or female slave,
nsnn, eighteen MSS,
8, You who lay field — ] Read laiipn, in the second
person ; to answer to the verb following ; so Vulg,
9. To mine ear — ] The sentence in the Hebrew text
seems to be imperfect in this place; as likewise in chap,
xxii, 14, where the very same sense seems to be required

176 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. V.
as here. See the note there : and compare 1 Sam, ix, 15,
In this place LXX supply the word tixuo-in, and Syr, ynnii^x,
auditus est Jehovah in auribus meis : i. e. nbiS, as in chap,
xxii, 14,
9, 10, — many hous'es — ] This has reference to what
was said in the preceding verse : " In vain are ye so intent
upon joining house to house, and field to field : your houses
shall be left uninhabited, and your fields shall become de
solate and barren ; so that a rineyard of ten acres shall pro
duce but one bath (not eight gallons) of wine, and the
husbandman shall reap but a tenth part of the seed which
he has sown,"
11, — to follow strong drink] Theodoret and Chrysos
tom on this place, both Syrians, and unexceptionable wit
nesses in what belongs to their own country, inform us,
that laiy, (r«sg« in the Greek of both 'Testaments, rendered
by us by the general term strong drink), meant properly
palm-wine, or date-wine, which was and is .still much in
use in the eastern countries, Judea was famous for the
abundance and excellence of its palm-trees; and conse
quently had plenty of this wine. " Fiunt ( vina) et e pomis : —
primumque e palmis, quo Parthi et Indi utuntur, et Oriens
totus : maturarura modio in aquae congiis tribus macerate
expressoque :" Plin. xiv. 19. " Ab bis cariotee [palmee]
maxime celebrantur ; et cibo quidem, sed et succo, uberrimse.
Ex quibus praecipua vina Orienti ; iniqua capiti, unde pomo
nomen :" Id. xiii. 9, Kaegaj signifies stupefaction .- and in
Hebrew likewise, the wine has its narae from its remarkable
inebriating quality,
11, 12, Wo unto them who rise early — ] There is a like
ness between this and the following passage of the Prophet
Amos, who probably wrote before Isaiah : if the latter is the
copyer, he seems hardly to have equalled the elegance of
the original : —
" Ye that put far away the evil day.
And affect the seat of violence ;
Who lie upon beds of ivory,
And stretch yourselves upon your couches ;
And eat the Iambs from the flock,
And calves from the midst of the stall ;
Who chant to the sound of the viol,
And like David invent for yourselves instruments of music ;
Who quaff wine in large bowls,
And are anointed with the choicest ointments :
But are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph," Amos vi, 3-6.

Chap. V. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 177
13, 14, And their nobles — ] These verses have likewise
a reference to the two preceding. They, that indulged in
feasting and drinking, shall perish with hunger and thirst;
and Hades shall indulge his appetite as much as they had
done, and devour them all. The image is strong, and ex
pressive in the highest degree, Habakkuk uses the sarae
image with great force : the ambitious and avaricious con
queror " Enlargeth his appetite like Hades ;
And he is like death, and will never be satisfied," Hab. ii, 5,
But, in Isaiah, Hades is introduced, to much greater advan
tage, in person ; and placed before our eyes in the form of
a ravenous monster, opening wide his unmeasurable jaws,
and swallowing them all together,
17, — without restraint — ] Diaia, secundum ductum
eorum : i. e. suo ipsorum ductu ; as their own wdl shall lead
them, IhiA. And the kids — ] 'Reh. b'<^i, strangers. The LXX
read, more agreeably to the design of the Prophet, Diia,
«gvs;, the lambs : Diu, the kids, Dr Durell; nearer to the
present reading : and so Archbishop Secker, The mean
ing is, their luxurious habitations shall be so entirely de
stroyed, as to become a pasture for flocks,
18, — as a long cable] The LXX, AquUa, Sym, and
Theod, for ibana read ibana, ag c-^oma, or o-xomoi; : and the
LXX, instead of xiw, read some other word signifying long;
ai Fjjoivio) foxx^ai: and so likewise the Syriac, xaiix, Houbi
gant conjectures, that the word which the LXX had in their
copies was :/ini;, which is used. Lev, xxi, 18. xxii, 23, for
something in an animal body superfluous, lengthened beyond
its natural measure. And he explains it of sin added to sin,
and one sin drawing on another, till the whole comes to an
enormous length and magnitude ; corapared to the work of
a rope-maker, still increasing and lengthening his rope, with
the continued addition of new materials, " Eos propheta
sirailes facit horaini restiario, qui funera torquet, cannabe
addita et contorta, eadem iterans, donee funem in longum
duxerit, neque eum liceat protrahi longius," " An evU in
clination (says Kimchi on the place, from the ancient Rab
bins) is at the- beginning like a fine hair-string, but at the
finishing like a thick cart-rope," By a long progression in
iniquity, and a continued accumulation of sin, men arrive
at length to the highest degree of wickedness ; bidding open

178 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. V.
defiance to God, and scoffing at his threatened judgments, as
it is finely expressed in the next verse. The Chaldee para
phrast explains it in die same manner, of wickedness increas
ing from small beginnings, tUl it arrives to a great magnitude,
23, — the righteous] piis, singular, LXX, Vulg, and
two editions,
24, — the tongue of fire] " The flame, because it is in
the shape of a tongue ; and so it is called metaphorically ;",
Sal, b. Melee, The raetaphor is so exceedingly obvious, as
well as beautiful, that one may wonder that it ias not been
more frequently used, Virgil very elegantly intimates, ra
ther than expresses, the image : I&n. ii, 682,
" Ecce levis, summo de vertice visus luli
Fundere lumen apex ; trafctuque innoxia molli
Lamhere flamma comas, et circum tempora joasc?,"
And more boldly of .35tna darting out flames from its top :
Mn. in, 574,
" Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit."
The disparted tongues, as it were, of fire, (Acts ii, 3,), which
appeared at the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles,
give the same idea ; that is, of flames shooting diversely into
pyramidal forras, or points, like tongues. It may be further
observed, that the Prophet in this place has given the meta
phor its full force, in applying it to the action of fire in eat
ing up and devouring whatever comes in its ¦ way, like a
ravenous animal, whose tongue is principally employed in
taking in his food or prey ; which image Moses has strongly
exhibited in a most expressive comparison : — " And Moab
said to the elders of Midian, Now shall this coUection of
" people lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh
up the grass of the field ;" Numb, xxii, 4. See also 1 Kings
xviu, 38,
25, — and the mountains trembled — ] Probably referring
to the great earthquakes in the days of Uzziah king of Ju
dah, in, or not long before, the time of the Prophet himself ;
recorded as a remarkable era in the title of the Prophecies
of Amos, chap, i, 1, and by Zechariah, chap, xiv, 5,
26, — he will hist — ] " The raetaphor is taken frora the
practice of those that keep bees ; who di-aw them out of their
hives into the fields, and lead them back again, trv^to-fixm, by
a hiss, or a whisde :" Cyril, on the place ; and to the same
purpose, Theodoret, ibid. In chap, vii, 18, the metaphor is

Chap. V. NOTES ON ISAIAH. I'/O
more apparent, by being carried further ; where the hostile
armies are expressed by the fly and the bee : —
"Jehovah shall hist the fly,
That is in the utmost parts of Egypt ;
And the bee, that is in the land of Assyria."
On which place see Deut.i, 44, Psal, cxvin, 12,; and God
calls the locusts his great army, Joel ii, 25, Exod, xxiii, 28,
See Huet, Quaest, Alnet, ii, 12,
Ibid, — with speed — ] This refers to the 19th verse. As
the scoffers had challenged God to make speed and to hasten
his work of vengeance ; so now God assures thera, that with
speed and swiftly it shall come,
27, Nor shall the girdle — ] The eastern people, wear
ing long and loose garments, were unfit for action or busi
ness of any kind, without girding their clothes about them :
when their business was finished, they took off their girdles,
A girdle therefore denotes strength ahd activity; and to un
loose the girdle, is to deprive of strength, to render unfit for
action, God promises to unloose the loins of kings before
Cyrus, chap, xlv, 1. The girdle is so essential a part of a
soldier's accoutrement, being the last that he puts on to
make himself ready for action, that to be girded, {mvus-Sxi,
with the Greeks, means to be completely armed, and ready
for battle : — *
ATgeiSu! §' 6looii''£", '^i ^anua-Sxt avuyiv
A^yiia;. II, xi, 15,
To Ss iv^vfxi rx o-jrXx ixxXnt o'i ¦!TX>.xioi ^attvoSxi. PaUSan. BoeOt,
It is used in the same manner by the Hebrews : — " Let not
him, that girdeth himself, boast, as he that unlooseth his
girdle," I Kings xx, 11,; that is, " triumph not, before the
war is finished,"
28, The hoofs of their horses shall be counted as adamant.]
The shoeing of horses with iron plates nailed to the hoof is
quite a modern practice, and unknown to the ancients ; as
appears from the silence of the Greek and Roman writers,
especially those that treat of horse-raedicine ; who could not
h&ve passed over a matter so obvious, and of such impor
tance, that now the whole science takes its name from it,
being called by us Farriery, The horse-shoes of leather and
of iron, which are mentioned ; the silver and the gold shoes
with which Nero and Poppea shod their mules, used occa
sionally to preserve the hoofs of delicate cattle, or for vanity,

180 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap; V.
were of a very different kind ; they inclosed the whole hoof
as in a case, or as a shoe does a man's foot, and were bound
or tied on. For this reason, the strength, firmness, and so
lidity of a horse's hoof was of much greater importance with
them than with us ; and was esteemed one of the first praises
of a fine horse, Xenophon says, that a good horse's hoof is
hard, hollow, and sounds Upon the ground like a cymbal.
Hence the x^^koto^sj 'Vtnx of Homer ; and Virgil's " solido
graviter sonat ungula cornu," And Xenophon gives direc
tions for hardening the horse's hoofs, by making the pave
ment, on which he stands in the stable, with round-headed
stones. For want of this artificial defence to the foot,
which our horses have, Amos (vi, 12.) speaks of it as a thing
as much impracticable to make horses run upon a hard rock,
as to plough up the same rock with oxen : —
"Shall horses run upon a rock ?
Shall one plough it up with oxen ?"
These circumstances must be taken into consid,eration, in or
der to give us a full notion of the propriety and force of tlie
image, by which the Prophet sets forth the strength and ex
cellence of the Babylonish cavalry ; which made a great part
of the strength of the Assyrian army. Xenoph. Cyrop.
lib. ii.
27, 28. None among them — ] Kirpchi has well Ulustrated
this continued exaggeration, or hyperbole, as he rightly calls
it, to the following effect : — " Through the greatness of their
courage, they shall not be fatigued with their march; nor
shall they stumble, though they march with the utmost
speed : they shaU not slumber by day, nor sleep by night ;
neither shall they ungird their armour, or put off their san
dals, to take their rest : their arms shaU be always in readi
ness, their arrows sharpened, and their bows bent : the hoofs
of their horses are hard as a rock ; they shall not fail, or
need to be. shod with iron : the wheels of their carriages shall
move as rapidly as a whirlwind."
30. And these shall look to the heaven upward, and down
to the earth.] yixb laaii. K»i ifo^M^'ovlxt n; rv> ym. So the
LXX, according to Vat. and Alex, copies ; but the Compl.
and Aid, editions have it more fully thus, iCoh ift^xi^ovlM u;
Tov n^xvoii xva, xxt xxla ; and the Arabic, from the LXX, as
if it had stood thus, K«( ifiZM-^ovlxi m tou h^xuv, xxi m nt yti»
xxla : both of which are plainly defective ; the words m rm
yv being wanted in the former, and the word xm in the

Chap. V. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 181
latter. But an ancient Coptic version from the LXX, sup
posed to be of the 2d century, some fragments of which are
preserved in the library of St Germain des Prez at Paris,
completes the sentence; for, according to this version, it
stood thus in LXX, K«i ifi^Xiipoflai Uf rov 8g«v8» XVU, xxi e({ t»i»
ym xd\a ; and so it stands in LXX, MSS Pachom, and r,
D. II, according to which they must have read in their He
brew text in this manner: nonb yixbi nbynb Dinwb Da3i,
This is probably the true reading ; with which I have made
the translation agree. Compare chap. viii. 22. where the
same sense is expressed in regard to both particulars, which
are here equaUy and highly proper, the looking upwards, as
well as down to the earth; but the form of expression is
varied. I believe the Hebrew text in that place to be right,
though not so full as I suppose it was origin aUy here ; and
that of the LXX there to be redundant, being as full as the
Coptic version, and MSS Pachom. and i. D, ii, represent it
in this place, from which I suppose it has been interpolated.
Ibid, the gloomy vapour] Syr, and Vulg, seem to have
read nbsijfa. But Jarchi explains the present reading as
signifying darkness; and so possibly Syr, and Vulg, may
have understood it in the same manner.

CHAPTER VI,
As this vision seems to contain a solemn designation of
Isaiah to the prophetical office, it is by most interpreters
thought to be the first in order of his prophecies. But this
perhaps may not be so : for Isaiah is said, in the general title
of his Prophecies, to have prophesied in the time of Uzziah ;
whose acts first and last he wrote, 2 Chron, xxri, 22, which
was usually done by a contemporary Prophet: and the phrase,
" in the year when Uzziah died," probably raeans after the
death of Uzziah ; as the sarae phrase, chap, xiv, 28, raeans
after the death of Ahaz, Not that Isaiah's prophecies are
placed in exact order of tirae : chapters ii, iii, iv. v. seera by
internal raarks to be antecedent to chap. i. ; they suit the time
of Uzziah, or the former part of Jotham's reign ; whereas
chap. i. can hardly be earlier than the last years of Jotham.
See note on chap. i. 7. and ii. 1. This might be a new de
signation, to introduce more solemnly a general declaration
of the whole course of God's dispensations in regard to his

182 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. VI.
people, and the fates of the nation; which are even now stUl
depending, and vriU not be fully accomplished till the final
restoration of Israel.
In this vision the ideas are taken in general frora royal
majesty, as displayed by the Monarchs of the East: for the
Prophet could not represent the ineffable presence of God
by any other than sensible and earthly images. The parti
cular scenery of it is taken from the temple. God is repre
sented as seated on his throne above the ark in the most
holy place, where the glory appeared above the cherubim,
surrounded by his attendant ministers. This is caUed by
God himself, " The place of his throne, and the place of the
soles of his feet ;" Ezek. xliii. 7. " A glorious throne, ex
alted of old, is the place of our sanctuary," saith the Prophet
Jeremiah, chap. xvii. 12. The very posture of sitting is a
mark of state and solemnity : " Sed et ipsum verbum sedere
regni significat potestatem," saith Jerom; Comment, in
Ephes. i. 20. See note on chap. Iii. 2. St John, who has
taken many sublime iraages from the Prophets of the Old
Testament, and in particular from Isaiah, hath exhibited the
same scenery, drawn out into a greater number of particulars.
Rev. chap. iv.
The veil, separating the most holy place from the holy, or
outermost part of the temple, is here supposed to be taken
away ; for the Prophet, to whom the whole is eihibited, is
manifestly placed by the altar of burnt-offering, at the en
trance of the temple, (compare Ezek. xlui. 5, 6.), which was
filled with the train of the robe, the spreading and overflow
ing of the divine glory. The Lord upon the throne, accord
ing to St John, xii. 41. was Christ; and the vision related
to his future kingdom ; when the veU of separation was to
be reraoved, and the whole earth was to be fiUed with the
glory of God, revealed to all mankind : which is likewise im
pUed in the hymn of the seraphim ; the design of which is,
saith Jerom on the place, ' ut mysterium Trinitatis in una
Divinitate deraonstrent ; et nequaquam templum Judaicum,
sicut prius, sed omnera terram UUus gloria plenam esse tes-
tentur." It relates indeed primarily to the Prophet's own
time, and the obduration of the Jews of that age, and their
punishment by the Babylonish captivity ; but extends in its
fuU latitude to the age of Messiah, and the blindness of the
Jews to the gospel ; (see Matt. xiU. 14. John xii. 40. Acts
xxriii. 26. Rom. xi. 8.) ; the desolation of their country by
the Roraans, and their being rejected by God : tha;t never-

Chap. VI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 18.3
theless a holy seed, a remnant, should be preserved, and that
the nation should sprout out and flourish again from the old
stock. In the first verse, fifty-one MSS, and one edition ; in the
8th verse, forty- four MSS, and one edition ; and in the 1 1th
verse, thirty-lliree MSS, and one edition, for i2ix, " the
Lord," read nini, " Jehovah;" which is probably the true
reading, (compare verse 6th) ; as in many other places, in
which the superstition pf the Jews has substituted i3ix for
nini. 2. he covereth his feet.] By the feet the Hebrews mean
all the lower parts of the body. But the people of the East
generaUy wearing long robes reaching to the ground, and
covering the lower parts of the body down to the feet, it may
hence have been thought want of respect and decency to
-appear in public, and on solemn occasions, with even the
feet themselves uncovered. Kerapfer, speaking of the king
of Persia giving audience, says ; " Rex in raedio supremi
atrii cruribus more patrio inflexis sedebat: corpus tunica
investiebat flava, ad suras cum staret protensa ; discumben-
tis vero pedes discalceatos pro urbanitate patria operiens .-"
Amoen. Exot. p. 227. Sir John Chardin's MS note on this
place of Isaiah is as follows : " Grande marque de respect
en Orient de se cacherles pieds, quand on est assis, et de
baisser le visage. Quand le soverain se monstre en Chine
et a Japon, chacun se jette le visage contre terre, et il n'est
pas permis de regarder le roi."
3. Holy, holy, holy — ] This hyran, performed by the
seraphira, divided into two choirs, the one singing respon-
sively to the other, which Gregory Nazian. Carm. 18. very
elegandy calls J^vfi^moy, xyn(pusoy, xfyiXm ^xa-iy, is formed upon
the practice of alternate singing, which prevailed in the
Jewish church from the tirae of Moses, whose ode at the
Red Sea was thus performed, (see Exod. xv. 20, 21.), to
that of Ezra, under whom the priests and Levites sung al
ternately, " O praise Jehovah, for he is gracious ;
For his mercy endureth for ever."
Ezra iii. 11, See De S, Poes, Hebr, Prael, xix, at the be
ginning, 5, I am struck dumb.] inma, twenty-eight MSS (five
ancient) and three editions, I understand it as from Dil, or
Dm, silere; and so it is rendered by Syr, Vulg, Sym, and

184 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Ch.4P. VI.
by some of the Jewish interpreters, apud, Sal, b. Melee,
The rendering of the Syriac is, iJX iiin, stupens, attonitus
sum. He immediately gives the reason why he was struck
dumb ; because he was a man of polluted lips, and dwelt
among a people of poUuted lips ; and was unworthy either
to join the seraphim in singing praises to God, or to be
the messenger of God to his people. Compare Exod, iv.
10, vi, 12. Jer. i. 6,
6, from off the altar.] That is, from the altar of burnt-
offerings, before the door of the temple ; on which the fire
that came down at first from heaven. Lev, ix, 24, 2 Chron,
vii, 1, was perpetuaUy kept burning: it was never to be ex
tinguished, Lev.vi. 12, 13,
9, Thirteen MSS have nxi, in the regular form.
10. Make gross — ] The Prophet speaks of the event,
the fact as it would actually happen ; not of God's purpose
and act by his ministry. 'The Prophets are in other places
said to perform the thing which they only foretell : —
" Lo ! I have given thee a charge this day.
Over the nations, and over the kingdoras ;
To pluck up, and to pull down ;
To destroy, and to demolish ;
To build, and to plant," Jer, i, 10,
And Ezekiel says, ."when I came to destroy die city;"
that is, as it is rendered in the margin of our version,
" when I came to prophesy, that the city should he destroy
ed;" chap, xliii, 3, To hear, and not understand; to see,,
and not perceive ; is a common saying in many languages,
Demosthenes uses it, and expressly calls it a proverb : »« to
TYii "BTX^ot^iXi o^uyrxi fATfi o^xvj, XXI xxovoyrx? ftvt xxovay ; Contra
Aristogit, i. sub fin. The Prophet, by the bold figure in the
sentiment above-mentioned, and the elegant form and con
struction of the sentence, has raised it from a common pro-'
verb into a beautiful mashal, and given it the sublime air
of poetry. Ibid. — close up] yiwn : this word Sal. b. Melee, ex
plains to this sense, in which it is hardly used elsewhere, on
the authority of Onkelos. He says, it means closing up the
eyes, so that one cannot see; that the root is 3?1W, by which
word the Targum has rendered the word na, Lev. xiv. 42.
nia nx ntai,^" and shaU plaster the house." And the
word ntj is used in the same sense, Isa. xliv. 18. So that it
signifies to close up the eyes by sorae matter spread upon
the lids; Mr Harmer very ingeniously applies to this pas-

Chap. VI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 1S5
sage a practice of sealing up the eyes ns a cereraony, or as
a kind of punishraent, used in the East, frora which the
iraage raay possibly be taken. Observations, ii. 278.
Ibid. — with their hearts.] laabai, fifteen MSS, and
two editions.
Ibid. — and I should heal.] xsixi, LXX, Vulg. So
Ukewise Matt, xiii, 14, John xii, 40, Acts xxviii, 27,
1 1, — be left.] For nxiyn, LXX and Vulg, read ixu^n,
13, ^-a tenth part] This passage, though somewhat
obscure, and variously explained by various interpreters,
yet, I think, has been made so clear by the accomplishment
of the prophecy, that there remains little room to doubt of
the sense of it. When Nebuchadnezzar had carried away
the greater and better part of the people into captivity,
there was yet a tenth remaining in the land, the poorer
sort, left to be vine-dressers and husbandmen, under Geda-
Uah, 2 Kings xxv, 12, 22, ; and the dispersed Jews gathered
themselves together, and returned to him, Jer, xl, 12, : yet
even thesej fleeing into Egypt after the death of Gedaliah,
contrary to the warning of God given by the Prophet Jere
miah, miserably perished there. Again, in the subsequent
and more remarkable completion of the prophecy, in the
destruction of Jerusalem and the dissolution of the com
monwealth by the Romans, when the Jews, after the loss of
above a mUlion of men, had increased from the scanty resi
due that was left of thera, and had become very numerous
again in their country ; Hadrian, provoked by their rebel
lious behaviour, slew above half a million more of thera, and
a second tirae almost extirpated the nation. Yet after these
signal and almost universal destructions of that nation, and
after so many other repeated exterminations and massacres
of them, in different times and on various occasions since,
we yet see, with astonishment, that the stock still reraains,
frora which God, according to his promise frequently given
by his Prophets, wUl cause his people to shoot forth again,
and to flourish.
For Da,- above seventy MSS (eleven ancient) read na ;
and so LXX,
CHAPTER VIL
The confederacy of Retsin king of Syria, and Pekah
king of Israel, aganst the kingdom of Judah, was forraed in
the time of Jotham ; and perhaps the effects of it were felt

186 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. VII.
in the latter part of his reign: see 2 Kings xv. 37. and
note on chapi i. 7 — 9. However, in the very beginning
of the reign of Ahaz, they jointly invaded Judah vrith a
powerffll army, and threatened to destroy, or to dethrone,
the house of David. The king and royal family being in
the utmost consternation on receiving advices of their designs,
Isaiah is sent to thera to support and comfort them in their
present distress, by 'assuring them, that God would make
good his promises to David and his house. This makes the
subject of this, and the following, and the beginning of the
ninth chapters ; in which there are many and great diffi
culties. Chapter vii. begins with an historical account of the occa
sion of this prophecy; and then foUows, ver. 4 — 16. a pre
diction of the ill success of the designs of the IsraeUtes and
Syrians against Judah ; and, from thence to the end of the
chapter, a denunciation of the calamities to be brought upon
the king and people of Judah by the Assyrians, whom tiiey
had now hired to assist them. Chapter riii. has a pretty
close connexion with the foregoing : it contains a confirma^
tion of the prophecy before given of the approaching de
struction of the kingdoms of Israel and Syria by the Assy
rians ; of the denunciation of the invasion of Judah fey the
same Assyrians: ver. 9, 10. give a repeated general assur
ance, that all the designs of the enemies of God's people shaU
be in the end disappointed, and brought to nought; ver. 11,
&c. admonitions and threatenings, (I do not attempt a more
particular explanation of this very difficult part), concluding
with an illustrious prophecy (chap. ix. 1 — 6.) of the mani
festation of Messiah ; the transcendent dignity of his cha
racter; and the universality and eternal duration of his
kingdom. 4. The Syfiac omits Dixi ; Vulg. reads Dix ^bn : one or
the other seems to be the true reading. I prefer the for
mer; or, instead of ^ai Dixi, read ]a npsi, MS.
8, 9. Though the head of Syria be Damascus,
And the head of Damascus, Retsin ;
Yet within threescore and five years
Ephraim shall be broken, that he be no raore a people :
And the head of Ephraim be Samaria ;
And the head of Samaria, Remaliah's son.]
" Here are six lines, or three distichs, the order of which
seems to have been disturbed by a transposition, occasioned
by three of the lines beginning with the same word WX11 ;

Chap. VII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 187
which three lines ought not to have been separated by any
other line intervening; but a copyist, having written the
first of them, and casting his eye on the third, might easily
proceed to write, after the first Une beginning with wxil,
that which ought to have foUowed the third line beginning
with wxil. Then, finding his mistake, to preserve the
beauty of his copy, added at die end the distich which
should have been in the middle; making that the second
distich which ought to have been the third. For the order
as it now stands is preposterous : the destruction of Ephraim
is denounced, and then their grandeur is set forth ; whereas
naturally the representation of the grandeur of Ephraim
should precede that of their destruction. And the destruc
tion of Ephraim has no coherence with the grandeur of
Syria, simply as such, which it now foUows ; but it naturaUy
and properly foUows die grandeur of Ephraim, joined to
that of Syria their aUy.
" The arrangement then of the whole sentence seems
originally to have been thus :
" Though the head of Syria be Damascus ;
And the head of Daraascus, Retsin :
And the head of Ephraim be Samaria ;
And the head of Samaria, Remaliah's son :
Yet within threescore and five years
Ephraim shall be broken, that he be no more a people." Dr Jubb.
8. — threescore and five years] It was sixty-five years
from the beginning of the reign of Ahaz, when this pro
phecy was delivered, to the total depopidation of the king
dom of Israel by Esarhaddon, who carried away the re
mains of the ten tribes which had been left by Tiglath
PUeser and Shalraaneser, and who planted the country with
new inhabitants. That the country was not wholly stripped
of its inhabitants by Shalraaneser, appears frora many pas
sages of the history of Josiah ; where Israelites are men
tioned as still remaining there, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 6, 7. 33.
and xxxv. 18. 2 Kings xxiii. 19, 20. This seems to be die
best explanation of the chronological difficulty in this place,
which has much embarrassed the comraentators : see Usserii
Annal. V. T. ad an. 3327 ; and Sir I. Newton, Chronol.
p. 283.
" That the last deportation of Israel by Esarhaddon was
in the sixty-fifth year after the second of Ahaz, is probable,
for the following reasons : The Jews, in Seder Olara Rabba,

188 NOTES' ON ISAIAH. Chap. VII.
and the Talraudists, in D. Kimchi on Ezek. iv. say, that
Manasseh king of Judah was carried to Babylon by the king
of Assyria's captains, 2 Chron. xxxiu. 11. in the twenty-
second year of his reign ; that is, before Christ 676, accord
ing to Dr Blair's tables. And they are probably right in
this. It could not be much earlier ; as the king of Assyria
was not king of Babylon tiU 680; ibid. As Esarhaddon .
was then in the neighbourhood of Samaria, it is highly pro
bable that he did then carry away the last reraains of Israel;
and brought those strangers thither, who mention him as
their founder, Ezra iv. 2. But this year is just the sixty-
fifth year from the second of Ahaz, which was 740 before
Christ. Now the carrying away of the last remains of
Israel, (who, tiU then, though their kingdom was destroyed
forty-five years before, and though small in number, yet
might keep up some form of being a people, by living ac
cording to their own laws), entirely put an end to the peo
ple of Israel, as a people separate from all others: for from
this time they never returned to their own country in a
body, but were confounded with the people of Judah in the
captivity ; and the whole people, the ten tribes included,
were called Jews." .Dr Jubb.
9. If ye believe not — ] " This clause is very much Ulus
trated, by considering the captivity of Manasseh as happen
ing at the same time with this predicted final ruin of
Ephraim as a people. The near connexion of the two
facts raakes the prediction of the one naturally to cohere
with the prediction of the other. And the words are well
suited to this event in the history of the people of Judah.
" If ye believe not, ye shall not be established;" that is,
unless ye believe this prophecy of the destruction of Israel,
ye Jews also, as well as the people of Israel, shall not re
main established as a kingdora and people ; ye also shall be
visited with punishment at the same tirae : As our Saviour
told the Jews in his time, " unless ye repent, ye shall all
likewise perish ;" intimating their destruction by the Ro
mans ; to whicli akso, as well as to the captirity of Manas
seh, and to the Babylonish captivity, the riews of the Pro
phet might here extend. The close connexion of this threat
to the Jews, with the prophecy of the destruction of Israel,
is another strong proof, that the order of the preceding lines
above proposed is right," Dr Jubb.
Ibid. If ye believe not in me — ] The exhortation of Je-

Chap. VII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 189
hoshaphat to his people, when God had promised to them,
by the Prophet Jahaziel, victory over the Moabites and
Amraonites, is very like this both in sense and expression,
and seems to be delivered in verse :
" Hear me, O Judah; and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem !
Believe in Jehovah your God, and ye shall be established :
Believe his prophets, and ye shall prosper." 2 Chron. xx. 20.
Where both the sense and construction render very pro
bable a conjecture of Archbishop Secker on this place ; that
instead of ia we should read ia. " If ye will not believe in
me, ye shall not be establi,shed." So likewise Dr Durell.
The Chaldee has, " If ye will not believe in the words of
the Prophet;" which seeras to be a paraphrase of the read
ing here proposed. In favour of which it raay be further
observed, that in one MS ia is upon a rasure ; and another
for the last xb reads xbi ; which would properly follow ia,
but could not follow ia.
11. Go deep to the grave — ] So Aquila, Sym. Theodot,
Vulg, 14, jEHOrAH] For liix, twenty-five MSS (nine an
cient) read mni. And so ver, 20, eighteen MSS,
14 — 16, When he shall know — ] " Though so much
has been written on this important passage, there is an ob
scurity and inconsequence which still attends it, in the ge
neral run of all the interpretations given tp it by the raost
learned. And this obscure incoherence is given to it by the
false rendering ^a Hebrew particle, viz, b in inj?ib. This
has been generally rendered, either " that he may know,"
or " tUl he know," It is capable of either version, without
doubt. But either of these versions raakes ver, 15, incoherent
and inconsistent with ver, 16, For ver, 16, plainly means to
give a reason for the assertion in ver, 15, ; because it is sub
joined to it by the particle ia, for. But it is no reason why
a chUd should eat butter .and honey till he was at an age to
distinguish, that before that time the land of his nativity
should be free from its eneraies. This latter supposition
indeed iraplies what is inconsistent with the preceding asser
tion : For it implies, that in part of that tirae of the infancy
spoken of, the land should not be free frora eneraies, and
consequently these species of delicate food could not be at
tainable, as they are in tiraes of peace. The other version,
" that he may know," has no meanipg at all : For what sense
is there in asserting, that a child shall eat butter and honey,

190 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. VII.
that he may know to refuse evil and choose good ? Is there
any such effect in this food ? Surely no. Besides, the chUd
is thus represented to eat those things, which only a state of
peace produces, during its whole infancy, inconsistently with
ver. 16. which promises a relief from enemies only before the
end of this infancy ; implying plainly, that part of it would
be passed in distressful times of war and siege ; which was
the state of things when the prophecy was delivered.
" But all these objections are cut off, and a clear cohe
rent sense is given to this passage, by giving another sense
to the particle b ; which never occurred to me till I saw it
in Harmer's Observat. vol. i. p. 299. See how coherent
the words of the Prophet run, with how natural a connexion
one clause follows another, by properly rendering this one
particle : — " Behold this virgin shaU conceive, and bear a
son, and thou shalt call his name Immanuel : Butter and
honey shaU he eat, when he shall know to refuse eril, and
choose good. For, before this child shaU know to refuse
evil, and choose good, the land shaU be desolate, by whose
two kings thou art distressed." Thus ver. 16." subjoins a plain
reason why the child should eat butter and honey, the food
of plentiful times, when he came to a distinguishing age ;
viz. because before that time the country of the two kings,
who now distressed Judea, should be desolated; and so
Judea should recover that plenty which attends peace.
That this rendering, which gives perspicuity and rational
connexion to the passage, is according to; the use of the
Hebrew particle is certain. Thus, ipa niisb, " at the
appearing of morning, or, when morning appeared;" Exod.
xiv. 27. baxn nrb, " at meal-tirae, or, when it was time
to eat;" Ruth n. 14. In the same manner, inirib, " at his
knowing, that is, when he knows."
" Harmer (ibid.) has clearly shewn, that these articles of
food are deUcacies in the East ; and as such denote a state
of plenty. See also Josh. v. 6. They therefore naturaUy
express the plenty of the country, as a mark of peace re
stored to it. Indeed, ver. 22. it expresses a plenty arising
from the thinness of the people ; but that it signifies, ver. 15.
a plenty arising from deliverance from war then present, is
evident ; because otherwise there is no expression of this
deliverance. And that a deliverancie was intended to be
here expressed is plain, from calUng the chUd, which should
be born, Immanuel, God with us. It is plain, also, because

Chap. VII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 191
it is before given to the Prophet in charge to make a decla
ration of the deliverance, ver. 3 — 7.; and it is there made;
and this prophecy must undoubtedly be conformable to that
in this matter." Dr Jubb.
The circumstance of the child's eating butter and honey
is explained by Jarchi as denoting a state of plenty : " Buty-
rum et mel comedet infans iste, quoniam terra nostra plena
erit omnis boni:" Comment, in locum. The infant Jupi
ter, says Callimachus, was tenderly nursed with goat's milk
and honey: Hymn, in Jov. 48. Homer, of the orphan
daughters of Pandareus,
" Kofiio-o-i Se Ol' A<5g<iS(T»)
Twgai, XXI fiiXni yXvxica, xxi li^i'i otya." OdysS. XX. 68.
" Venus in tender delicacy rears
With honey, milk, and wine, their infant years." Pope.
Tgu^Ds 85-<if enSeili;- " This is a description of delicate food,"
says Eustathius on the place.
Agreeably to the observations communicated by the
learned person above-mentioned, which perfectly well ex
plain the historical sense of this much-dispute'd passage, not
excluding a higher secondary sense, the obvious and literal
meaning of the prophecy is this : ' That vrithin the tirae that
a young woman, now a virgin, should conceive and bring
forth a child, and that chUd should arrive at such an age
as to distinguish between good and evU, that is, within a
few years, (compare chap. vui. 4.), the enemies of Judah
should be destroyed.' But the prophecy is introduced in so
solemn a manner ; the sign is so marked, as a sign selected
and given by God himself, after Ahaz had rejected the offer
of any sign of his own choosing out of the whole compass
of nature ; the terms of the prophecy are so peculiar, and
the narae of the chUd so expressive, containing in them
much more than the circumstances of the birth of a common
child required, or even admitted ; that we raay easily sup
pose, that, in rainds prepared by the general expectation of
a great Deliverer to spring frora the house of David, they
raised hopes far beyond what the present occasion suggested ;
especially when it was found, that in the subsequent pro
phecy, delivered immediately afterward, this child, called
Immanuel, is treated as the Lord and Prince of the land of
Judah. Who could this be, other than the heir of the
throne of David ? under which character a great and even

192 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. VII.
a divine person had been promised. No one of that age
answered to this character, except Hezekiah; but he was
certainly born nine or ten years before the delivery of this
prophecy. That this was so understood at that time, is
collected, I think, with great probability, from a passage of
Micah, a Prophet contemporary with Isaiah, but who began
to prophesy after him ; and who, as I have already observed,
imitated him, and sometimes used his expressions. Micah,
having delivered that remarkable prophecy, which deter
mines the place of the birth of Messiah, " the ruler of God's
people, whose goings forth have been of old, from everlast
ing;" that it should be Bethlehem Ephrata; adds imrae
diately, that nevertheless, in the mean time, God would
deliver his people into the hands of their enemies : "he wUl
give them up, till she, who is to bear a child, shaU bring
forth;" Micah v. 3. This obviously and plainly refers to
some known prophecy concerning a woman to bring forth
a child ; and seems much more properly applicable to this
passage of Isaiah, than to any others of the same Prophet,
to which some interpreters have applied it. St Matthew,
therefore, in applying this prophecy to the birth of Christ,
does it not merely in the way of accommodating the words
of the Prophet to a suitable case not in the Prophet's view ;
but takes it in its strictest, clearest, and most important sense,
and applies it according to the original design and principal
intention of the Prophet.
17. But Jehovah will bring] Houbigant reads xiaii,
from LXX; xxxx i-irxfyi o Qto? : to mark the transition to a
new subject.
Ibid. Even the king of Assyria — ] Houbigant sup
poses these words to have been a marginal gloss, brought
into the text by mistake ; and so likewise Archbp. Secker.
Besides their baring no force or effect here, they do not
join well in construction with the words preceding ; as may
be seen by the strange manner in which the ancient inter
preters have taken thera ; and they very inelegantly forestall
the mention of the king of Assyria, which comes in with
great propriety in the 20th verse, I have therefore taken
the liberty of omitting them in the translation,
18, — hist the fly] See note on chap, v, 26,
Ibid, Egypt and Assyria] Senacherib, Esarhaddon, Pha-
rao Necho, and Nebuchadnezzar, who one after another
desolated Judea,

Chap. VII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 193
19, — cave7-m] So LXX, Syr. Vulg, whence Houbi
gant supposes the true reading to be. Dibbnin,
20. ' — the river] That is, the Euphrates; man, so read
the LXX, and two MSS,
Ibid, Jehovah shall shave by the hired rasor — ] To
shave with the hired rasor the head, the feet, and the beard,
is an expression highly parabolical ; to denote the utter de
vastation of the country from one end to the other, and the
plundering of the people, from the highest to the lowest, by
the Assyrians; whom God employed as his instrument to
punish the Jews, Ahaz himself, in the first place, hired the
king of Assyria to come to help him against the Syrians,
by a present raade to him of all the treasures of the teraple,
as well as his own : and God hiraself considered the great
nations, whom, he thus eraployed, as his raercenaries, and
paid them their wages : thus he paid Nebuchadnezzar for
his services against Tyre, by the conquest of Egypt ; Ezek.
xxix. 1 8 — 20. The hairs of the head are those of the high
est order in the state ; those of the feet, or the lower parts,
are the comraon people ; the beard is the king, the high-
priest, the very suprerae in dignity and majesty. Ihe
eastern people have always held the beard in the highest
veneration, and have been extremely jealous of its honour.
To pluck a man's beard is an instance of the greatest in
dignity that can be offered. See Isa. I. 6. The lung of the
Ammonites, to shew the utmost contempt of David, " cut
off half the beards of his servants ; and the men were greatly
ashamed : and David bade them tarry at Jericho till their
beards were grown ;" 2 Sam. x. 4, 5. Niebuhr, Arabic, p.
275. gives a modern instance of the very same kind of insult.
" The Turks," says Thevenot, " greatly esteem a man who
has a fine beard : it is a very great affront to take a raan by
his beard, unless it be to kiss it : they swear by the beard ;"
Voyages, i. p. 57. D'Arvieux gives a reraarkable instance
of an Arab, who, having received a wound in his jaw, chose
to hazard his life, rather than suffer his surgeon to take off
his beard. Meraoires, tora. iii. p. 214. See also Niebuhr,
Arabic, p. 61.
The reraaining verses of this chapter, 21 — 25. contain
an elegant and very expressive description of a country
depopulated, and left to run wild, from its adjuncts and cir
cumstances : the vineyards and corn-fields, before well cul
tivated, now overrun with briers and thorns ; much grass.

194 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. VII.
so that the few cattie that are left, a young cow and two
sheep, have their fuU range, and abundant pasture, so as
to yield mUk in plenty to the scanty family of the owner ;
the thinly scattered people, living not on corn, wine and oU,
the produce of cultivation, but on milk and honey, the gifts
of nature ; and the whole land given up to the wild beasts ;
so that the miserable inhabitants are forced to go out armed
with bows and arrows, either to defend themselves against
the wild beasts, or to supply themselves with necessary food
by hunting.
CHAPTER VIIL
The prophecy in the foregoing chapter relates directly to
the kingdom of Judah only : the first part of it promises them
deliverance from the united invasion of the Israelites and
Syrians; the latter part, from ver. 17. denounces the de
solation to be brought upon the kingdom of Judah by the
Assyrians. The 6th, 7th, and 8th verses of this chapter,
seem to take in both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
" This people, that refuseth the waters of SUoah," may be
meant of both : the IsraeUtes despised the kingdom of Judah,
which they had deserted, and now attempted to destroy; the
peopile of Judah, from a consideration of their own weak
ness, and a distrust of God's promises, being reduced to
despair, applied to the Assyrians for assistance against the
two confederate kings, But how could it be said of Judah,
that they rejoiced in Retsin and the son of Remaliah, the
enemies confederated against them ? If some of the people
were inclined to revolt to the enemy, which however does
not clearly appear from any part of the history or the pro
phecy, yet there was nothing like a tendency to a general
defection. This, therefore, must be understood of Israel,
The Prophet denounces the Assyrian invasion, which should
overwhelm the whole kingdom of Israel under Tiglath PUe
ser and Shalmaneser ; and the subsequent invasion of Jud9.h
by the same power under Senacherib, which would bring
them into the most imminent danger, like a flood reaching
to the neck, in which a man can but just keep his head
above water. The two next verses, 9, 10, are addressed by
the Prophet, as a subject of the kingdom of Judah, to the
Israelites and Syrians; and perhaps to all the enemies of
God's people; assuring them, that their attempts against

Chap. VIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 195
that kingdom shall be fruidess ; for that the promised Im
manuel, to whom he alludes by using his name to express
the signification of it, for God is with us, shaU be the de
fence of the house of Darid, and deliver the kingdom of
Judah out of their hands. He then proceeds to warn the
people of Judah against idolatry, divination, and the like
forbidden practices ; to which they were much inclined, and
which would soon bring down God's judgments upon Israel,
The prophecy concludes, at the 6th verse of chap, ix, with
promises of blessings in future times, by the coming of the
great Deliverer already pointed out by the name of Imma
nuel, whose person and character is set forth in terms the
most ample and magnificent.
And here it may be observed, that it is almost the con
stant practice of the Prophet to connect in like manner de
liverances temporal with spiritual. Thus the xith chapter,
setting forth the kingdom of Messiah, is closely connected
with the xth, which fbreteUs the destruction of Senacherib,
So likewise the destruction of nations, enemies to God, in
the xxxivth chapter, introduces the flourishing state of the
kingdom of Christ in die xxxvth. And thus the chapters,
from xl, to xlix, inclusive, plainly relating to the deliverance
from the captirity of Babylon, do in some parts as plainly
relate to the great deliverance by Christ.
1. Take unto thee a large mirror — ] The word piba is
not regularly formed frora bba, to roll, but frora nb j ; as piis
from ms, piba from nba, pip3 from np3, pibr from nbr,
&c. the 1 supplying the place of the radical n. nbi signifies
to shew, to reveal; properly, as Schroederus says, (De
Vestitu Mulier. Hebr. p. 294.), to render clear and bright
by rubbing, to polish : pibj, therefore, according to this de
rivation, is not a roll, or volume, but may very weU signify
a polished tablet of metal, such as anciently was used for a
mirror : the Chaldee paraphrast renders it by nib, a tablet ;
and the same word, though somewhat differently pointed,
the Chaldee paraphrast and the Rabbins render a mirror,
chap. iii. 23. The mirrors of the IsraelitLsh women were
made of brass finely polished, Exod. xxxviii. 8. ; from which
place it likevrise appears, that what they used were little
hand-mirrors, which they carried with them, even when they
assembled at the door of the tabernacle. I have a metalline
mirror, found in Herculaneum, which is not above three
inches square. The Prophet is commanded to take a

196 NOTES ON ISAIAH. ChaP. VIII.
mirror, or brazen polished tablet, not like these little hand-
mirrors, but a large one ; large enough for him to engrave
upon it, in deep and lasting characters, W13X aina, with a
workman's graving tool, the prophecy which he was to de
liver, lain in this place certainly signifies an instrument
to write, or to engrave with; but laiin, the same word, only
differing a Uttle in the form, means something belonging to
a lady's dress, chap. in. 22. (where; however five MSS leave
out the 1, whereby only it differs from the word in this
place) ; either a crisping-pin, which might be not unlike a
graving tool, as some wiU have it; or a purse, as others
infer from 2 Kings v. 23. It may therefore be called here
wiax am, a workman's instrument, to distinguish it from
nwx aim, an instrument of the same name used by the
women. In this manner he was to record the prophecy of
the destruction of Damascus and Saraaria by the Assyrians ;
the subject and sum of which prophecy is here expressed
with great brevity in four words, maher shalal, hash baz ;
i. e. " to hasten the spoU, to take quickly the prey :" which
are afterwards applied as the name of the Prophet's son,
who was made a sign of the speedy completion of it : Maher-
shalal Hash-baz; Haste-to-the-spoil Quick-to-the-prey. And
that.it raight be done with the greater soleranity, and to pre
clude all doubt of the real delivery of the prophecy before
the event, he calls witnesses to attest the recording of it.
4. For before the child — ] The prophecy was according
ly accoraplished vrithin three years; when Tiglath PUeser,
king of Assyria, went up against Daraascus, and took it, and
carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Retsin ; and
also took the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the. half tribe
of Manasseh, and carried them captive to Assyria ; 2 Kings
xvi. 9. XV. 29. 1 Chron. v. 26.
6, 7. Because this people have rejected — ] The gentie
waters of Siloah, a small fountain and brook just without
Jerusalera, which supplied a pool within the city for the use
of the inhabitants, is an apt emblem of the state of the king
dom and house of David, much reduced in its apparent
strength, yet supported by the blessing of God : and is fine
ly contrasted with the waters of the Euphrates, great, rapid,
and impetuous ; the image of the Babylonian empire, which
God threatens to bring down, like a raighty flood, upon all
these apostates of both kingdoms, as a punishment for their
manifold iniquities, and their contemptuous disregard of his

Chap. VIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 197
promises. The brook and the river are put for the kuig-
doras to which they belong, and the different states of which
respectively they most aptly represent. Juvenal, inveighing
against the corruption of Rome by the importation of Asiatic
manners, says, with great elegance, that the Orontes has
been long discharging itself into the Tiber : —
" Jampridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes."
And VirgU, to express the subraission of some of the eastern
countries to the Roman arras, says, that the waters of Eu
phrates now flowed raore humbly and gently : — " Euphrates
ibat jam raoUior undis :" .S^n. viii. 726. But the happy
contrast between the brook and the river gives a peculiar
beauty to this passage of the Prophet, with which the siraple
figure in the Roraan poets, however beautiful, yet uncon-
trasted, cannot contend.
8. Even to the neck shall he reach] He compares Jeru
salem (says Kirachi) to the head in the human body : as
when the waters come up to a raan's neck, he is very near
drowning ; for a Uttle increase of them would go over his
head : so the king of Assyria coming up tp Jerusalera was
like a flood reaching to the neck; the whole country was
overflowed, and the capital was in iraminent danger. Ac
cordingly the Chaldee renders reaching to the neck, by
reaching to Jerusalera.
9. Know ye this] God by his Prophet plainly declares
to the confederate adversaries of Judah, and bids thera re
gard and attend to his declaration, that all their efforts shall
be in vain. The present reading iri; is subject to many
difficulties : I follow that of the LXX, ij'i, yyart. ' Arch
bishop Secker approves this reading. iyi, know ye this, is
parallel and synonymous to linxn, give ear to it, in the
next line. The LXX have likevrise very well paraphrased
the conclusion of this verse : " When ye have strengthened
yourselves, ye shall be broken ; and though ye again streng
then yourselves, again shall ye be broken ;" taking inn as
meaning the same with iia^i.
11. As taking me by the hand] Eleven MSS (two an
cient) read nprna : and so Sym. Syr. Vulg.
12. Say ye not. It is holy — ] il^p. Both the reading
and the sense of this word are doubtful. The LXX mani
festly read m2;p ; for they render it by o-xAmsou, hard. Syr.
and Chald. render it xiin and HDD, rebellion. How they
came by this .sense of the word, or what they read in thtir
R

198 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. VIII.
Copies, is not so clear. But the worst of it is, that neither
of these readings or renderings, gives any clear sense in this
place : For why should God forbid his faithful servants to
say, with the unbelieving Jews, it is hard ; or, there is a
rebellion; or, as our translators render it, a confederacy?
And how can this be called, " walking in the way of this
people," ver. 11. which usually means, following their ex
ample ; joining with thera in religious worship ? Or what
confederacy do they raean ? The union of the kingdoms of
Syria and Israel against Judah ? That was properly a
league between two independent states; not an unlawful
conspiracy of one part against another in the same state ; for
this is the meaning of the word nyp. For want of any sa
tisfactory interpretation of this place, that I can meet with, J
adopt a conjecture of Archbishop Secker, which he proposes
with great diffidence ; and even seems immediately to give
up, as being destitute of any authority to support it. IwiU
give it in his own words : " Videri potest ex cap. v. 16. et
hujus cap. 13, 14. 19, legendum Wip, vel ii>np, eadem sen
tentia, qua I2inbx, Hos, xiv, 3, Sed nihil necesse est.
Vide enim Jer, xi, 9, Ezek, xxii, 25, Optime tamen sic
responderent huic versiculo versiculi 13, 14." The passages
of Jereraiah and Ezekiel, above referred to, seem to me not
at all to clear up the sense of the word itrp in this place. But
the context greatly favours the conjecture here given, and
makes it highly probable : " Walk not in the way of this
people ; call not their idols holy ; nor fear ye the object of
their fear: (that is, the n^xa-fix-rx, or gods of the idolaters;
for so fear here signifies, to wit, the thing feared ; so God
is called " the fear of Isaac," Gen. xxxi. 42. 53.) : but look
up to Jehovah as your Holy One ; and let Him be your
fear, and let Him be your dread ; and He shall be a holy
refuge unto you." Here there is a harmony and consistency
running through the whole sentence ; and the latter part
naturally arises out of the former, and answers to it. Ob
serve, that the difference between iwp and 'u;ip is chiefly in
the transposition of the two last letters ; for the letters i and
1 are hardly distinguishable in sorae copies, printed as well as
MS; so that the raistake, in respect of the letters them
selves, is a very easy and a very comraon one.
14. And He shall be unto you a sanctuary.] The word
Dab, unto you, absolutely necessary, as I conceive, to the
sense, is lost in this place : it is preserved ,by the Vulgate ;

Chap. VIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 199
" et erit vobis in sanctificationem :" the LXX have it in
the singular nuraber ; ef«( o-oi a; ayixTfioy. Or else, instead of
Wlpn, a sanctuary, we must read lUpin, a snare, which
would then be repeated, without any propriety or elegance,
at the end of the verse. The Chaldee reads instead of it
asiUT2, judgment; for he renders it by lyiiSj which word
frequently answers to aswn in his paraphrase. A MS has
(instead pf ^axbi Ti^ipn) laxb Dnb ; which clears the sense
and construction. But the reading of the Vulgate is, I think,
the best remedy to this difficulty ; and is in some degree au
thorized by Dnb, the reading of the MS above mentioned.
16. among my disciples] iiaba. " The LXX render
it, TS fin ftxSiiy. Bishop Chandler, Defence of Christianity,
p. 308. " thinks they read inb», that it be not understood;
and approves this reading :" Archbishop Seckee.
18. God of Hosts] A MS reads nixaa inbx.
19. Should they seek — ] After wils the LXX, repeat
ing the word, read wilin : Oux ihos zrpo; B-ioy «ut» ixi^vrito-no-i i
T( ix^ntna-isd-i arsjH Tm ^mrm tss yixfn;; and this repetition of the
verb seeras necessary to the sense ; and, as Procopius on the
place observes, it strongly expresses the Prophet's indigna
tion at their folly.
20. Unto the command, and unto the testimony — ] " Is
not mipn here the attested prophecy, ver. 1 — 4.? and per
haps nun the command, ver. 11 — 15.? for it means some
tiraes a particular, and even a human command ; see Prov.
vi. 20. and vii. 2, 3. where it is ordered to be hid, that is,
secretly kept :" Archbishop Secker. So Deschamps in
his translation, or rather paraphrase, understands it : " Te
nons-nous a I'instruraent authentique, mis en depot par
ordre du Seigneur." If this be right, the 16th verse must
be understood in the same manner.
Ibid. In which there is no obscurity] inw, as an adjec
tive, frequently signifies dark, obscure; and the noun iniy
signifies darkness, gloominess, Joel ii. 2, if we may judge by
the context :
" A day of darkness and obscurity ;
Of cloud, and of thick vapour ;
As the gloom spread upon the mountains :
A people mighty and numerous ;"
Where the gloom, inw, seems to be the same with the
cloud and thick vapour, mentioned in the line preceding :
see Lam, iv, 8, Job xxx, 30, See this meaning of the word

300 NOTBS ON ISAIAH. Chap. VIII.
mil? well supported in Christ. Muller Satura Observa-
tionura PhUolog, p, 53, Lugd, Bat, 1752, The morning
seems to be an idea wholly incongruous in the passage of
Joel : And in this of Isaiah, the words, " in which there is
no morning," (for so it ought to be rendered, if iniy in this
place signifies, according to its usual sense, morning), seem
to give no meaning at all, " It is because there is no light
in them," says our translation : If there be any sense in these
words, it is not the sense of the original; which cannot
justly be so translated. Qui n'a rien d'obscur ; Deschamps,
The reading of LXX and Syr, mil?, gift, affords not any
assistance towards the clearing up of this difficult place,
21, — distressed — ] Instead of ni2?p3, distressed, the
Vulg, Chald, and Sym, manifestly read biyai, stumbling,
tottering through weakness, ready to fall ; a sense which
suits very well with the place,
22, And he shall cast his eyes upward — ] The learned
professor Michaelis, treating of this place, (Not, in De S,
Poes, Hebr, Prael, ix,), refers to a passage in the Koran,
which is similar to it. As it is a very celebrated passage,
and on inany accounts remarkable, I shall give it here at
large, with the same author's further rem'arks upon it in
another place of his writings. It must be noted here, that
the learned professor renders aaa in this and the parallel
place, chap, v, 30, which I translate he looketh, by it thun-
dereth, frora Schultens, Orig- Ling, Hebr, lib, i, chap, 2. ;
of the justness of which rendering I much doubt. This
brings the image of Isaiah more near, in one circumstance, to
that of Mohammed, than it appears to be in my translation,
" Labid, contemporary vrith Mohammed, the last of the
seven Arabian poets who had the honour of having their
poeras, one of each, hung up in the entrance of the Temple
of Mecca, struck with the sublimity of a passage in the
Koran, became a convert to Mohammedism ; for he con
cluded, that no man could write in such a manner, unless
he were divinely inspired,
" One must have a curiosity to examine a passage which
had so great an effect upon Labid, It is, I must own, the
finest that I know in the whole Koran ; but I scarce think
it will have a second time the like effect, so as to tempt any
one of my readers to submit to circumcision. It is in the
second chapter ; where he is speaking of certain apostates
from the faith, ' They are like,' saith he, ' to a raan who

Chap. VIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 201
kindleth a light. As soon as it begins to shine, God takes
from them the light, and leaves them in darkness, that they
see nothing. They are deaf, dumb, and blind ; and return
not into the right way. Or they fare, as when a cloud, full
of darkness, thunder, and lightning, covers the heaven:
when it bursteth, they stop their earsiwith their fingers, with
deadly fear ; and God hath the unbelievers in his power.
The lightning almost robbeth them of their eyes : as often
as it flasheth, they go on by its light ; and when it vanisheth
in darkness, they stand still. If God pleased, they would re
tain neither hearing nor sight.' That the thought is beauti
ful, no one wUl deny ; and Labid, who had probably a mind
to flatter Mohammed, was lucky in finding a passage in the
Koran, so little abounding in poetical beauties, to which his
conversion raight with any propriety be ascribed. It was
weU that he went no further ; otherwise his taste for poetry
might have made hira again an infidel." Michaelis, Erpenii
Arabische Grararaatik abgekurzt, Vorrede, s. 32.
23. — accumulated darkness] Either nniin, fera. to agree
with nbsx ; or nunn bsx, alluding perhaps tp the pal
pable Egyptian darkness, Exod, x, 21,
Ibid, The land of Zebulon — ] Zebulon, Naphthali, Ma
nasseh, that is, the country of Galilee, all round the Sea of
Genesareth, were the parts that principally suffered in the
first Assyrian invasion under Tiglath PUeser : see 2 Kings
XV, 29, 1 Chron, v, 26, : and they were the first that en
joyed the blessing of Christ's preaching the gospel, and ex
hibiting his rairaculous works araong them. See Mede's
Works, p. 101, and 457.

CHAPTER IX,
2, Thou hast increased their joy] Eleven- MSS (two
ancient) read lb, according to the Masoretical correction.
Ibid, — as with the joy of harvest] iispa nnnii?a. For
iispa a MS has lisp, and another iispn : one of which
seems to be the true reading, as the noun preceding is in
regimine. 4, The greaves of the armed warrior] ]ko pxD. This
word, occurring only in this place, is of very doubtful sig
nification. Schindler fairly tells us, that we must guess at
it by the context. The Jews have explained it, by guess I

202 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IX.
believe, as signifying battle, conflict : the Vulgate renders it
violenta preedatio. But it seems as if something was rather
meant, which was capable of beconung fuel for the fire,
together vrith the garments mentioned in the same sentence.
In Syriac, the word, as a noun, signifies a sJioe or a sandal,
as a learned friend sijiggested to me some years ago: see
Luke XV, 22, Acts xii, 8. I take it therefore to mean that
part of the arraour which covered the legs and feet, and
I would render the two words in Latin by caliga caligati.
The burning of heaps of armour, gathered from the field of
battle, as an offering made to the god supposed to be the
giver of victory, was a custom that prevailed among some
heathen nations ; and the Romans used it as an emblem of
peace: which perfectly well suits with the design of the
Prophet in this place. A medal, struck by Vespasian on
finidiing his wars both at home and abroad, represents the
goddess Peace, holding an oUve branch in one hand, and
with a lighted torch in the other setting fire to a heap of
armour, Virgil mentions the custom :
" Cum priraam aciem Praeneste sub ipsa
Stravi, scutorumque incendi victor acervos," .^n, viii, 561.
See Addison on Medals, Series ii, 18, And there are
notices of some such practice araong the Israelites, and
other nations of the most early times, God promises to
Joshua victory over the kings of Canaan : " To-morrow I
will deliver them up all slain before Israel: thou shalt
hough their horses, and burn their chariots with fire;"
Josh, xi, 6, See also Nahum ii, 13. And the Psalmist em
ploys this linage to express complete victory, and a perfect
establishment of peace :
" He maketh wars to cease, even to the end of the land :
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder ;
And burneth the chariots in the fire," Psal. xlvi, 9,
nibajr, properly plaustra, the baggage-waggons ; which how
ever the LXX and Vulg. render scuta, shields, and Chald,
round shields, to shew the propriety of that sense of the
word from the etymology ; which, if admitted, makes the
iraage the sarae with that used by the Romans.
Ezekiel, in his bold manner, has carried this image to a
degree of araplification, which, I think, hardly any other of
the Hebrew poets would have attempted. He describes
the burning of the arms of the enemy, in consequence of

Chap. IX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 203
the complete victpry to be obtained by the Israelites over
Gog and Magog :
^' Behold, it is come to pass, and it is done ;
Saith the Lord Jehovah,
This is the day, of which I spake :
And the inhabitants of the cities of Israel shall go forth ;
And shall set on fire the armour, and the shield,
And the buckler, and the bow, and the arrows.
And the clubs, and the lances ;
And they shall set them on fire for seven years :
And they shall not bear wood from the field ;
"^Jeither shall they hew from the forest :
For of the armour shall they make their fires ;
And they shall spoil their spoilers,
And they shall plunder their plunderers," Ezek, xxxix, 8-10,
5, The government shall be upon his shoulder.] That is,
the ensign of government; the sceptre, the sword, the key,
or the like, which was borne upon or hung from the shoul
der. See note on chap. xxii. 22.
Chap. ix. 7. — Chap. x. 4.] This whole passage, reduced
to its proper and entire forra, and healed of the dislocation
which it suffers by the absurd division of the chapters, makes
a distinct prophecy, and a just poem, remarkable for the
regularity of its disposition, and the elegance of its plan. It
has no relation to the preceding or the following prophecy ;
though the parts, violently torn asunder, have been, on the
one side and the other, patched on to them. Those relate
principally to the kingdom of Judah; this is addressed ex
clusively to the kingdom of Israel. The subject of it is a
denunciation of vengeance awaiting their crimes. It is di
rided into four parts, each threatening the particular pu
nishment of some grievous offence — of their pride ; of their
perseverance in their vices ; of their impiety ; and of their
injustice. To which is added a general denunciation of a
further reserve of divine wrath, contained in a distich, be
fore used by the Prophet on a like occasion, chap. v. 25. and
here repeated after each part : this makes the intercalary
verse of the poem, or, as we call it, the burthen of the song.
" Post hoc comma (chap. x. 4.) interponitur spatium
unius lineae, in cod. 2. et 3. : idemque observatur in 245.
in quo nullum est spatium ad finem capitis ix." Kennicott,
Var. Leet.
7. Jehovah.] For i2ix, thirty MSS and three editions
read nini.

204, NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. IX.
8. — carry themselves haughtily] iriii, and they shall
know : so ours, and the versions in general. But what is it
that they shaU know ? The verb stands destitute of its ob
ject ; and the sense is imperfect. The Chaldee is the only
one, as far as I can find, that expresses it otherwise. He
renders the verb in this place by laiainxi, they exalt them
selves, or carry themselves haughtily; the same word by
which he renders inaa, chap, in, 16, He seems therefore
in this place to have read ma^iil ; which agrees perfectly
well with what foUows, and clears up the difficulty. Arch
bishop Secker conjectured iiaiii, referring it to inxV in
the next verse ; which shews, that he was not satisfied with
the present reading, Houbigant reads iriil, et pravi facti
sunt; which is found in a MS; but I prefer the reading of
the Chaldee, which suits much better with the context.
9, The bricks—^] " The eastern bricks, (says Sir John
Chardin, see Harmer, Obser, i, p, 176,), are only clay weU
moistened with water, and mixed with straw, and dried in
the sun," So that their walls are commonly no better than
our mud- walls : see MaundreU, p, 124, That straw was a
necessary part in the composition of this sort of bricks, to
make the parts of the clay adhere together, appears from
Exodus, chap, V, These bricks are properly opposed to
hewn stone, so greatly superior in beauty and durableness.
The sycamores, which, as Jerom on the place says, are tim-»
ber of Uttle worth, with equal propriety are opposed to the ce
dars, " As the grain and texture of the sycamore is remark
ably coarse and spongy, it could therefore stand in no com
petition at all (as it is observed, Isa, ix, 10,) with the cedar
for beauty and ornament :" Shaw, Supplement to Travels,
p, 96, We meet with the same opposition of cedars to sy
camores, 1 Kings X, 27, where Solomon is said to have made
silver as the stones, and cedars as the, sycamores in the vale,
for abundance. By this mashal, or figurative and senten
tious speech, they boast, that they shaU easily be able to re
pair their present losses, suffered perhaps by the first As
syrian invasion under Tiglath PUeser ; and to bring their
affairs to a more flourishing condition than ever,
10, — the princes qf Retsin against him] For iis, ene-r
mies, Houbigant by conjecture reads iiii?, princes ; which is
confirmed by twenty-one MSS (two ancient), and nine more
have 25 upon a rasure, and therefore had probably at first
liw. The princes of Retsin, the late ally of Israel, that is,

Chap. IX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 205
the Syrians, expressly named in the next verse, shall now be
excited against Israel,
The LXX in this place give us another variation : for
psi, they read pis in, ogos 'Zim, Mount Sion ; of which this
may be the sense : But Jehovah shall set up the adversaries
of Mount Sion against him, (i. e. against Israel), and will
strengthen his enemies together : the Syrians — the Philis
tines — who are called the adversaries of Mount Sion, See
Simonis Lex, in voce ^ao,
11, — on every side] ns baa, in every corner ; in every
part of their country, pursuing them to the remotest extre-
raities, and the raost retired parts. So the Chald, inx baa,
in every place,
13, — in one day] Eight MSS read Dva ; and another
has a rasure in the place of the letter a.
16, Jehovah] For iJix, eighteen MSS read nini.
17, For wickedness — ] Wickedness rageth like a fire,
destroying and laying waste the nation : but it shall be its
own destruction, by bringing down the fire of God's wrath,
which shall burn up the briers and the thorns ; that is, the
wicked themselves. Briers and thorns are an image fre-
quendy applied in Scripture, when set on fire, to the rage
of the vncked, violent yet impotent, and of no long con
tinuance — " they are extinct as the fire of thorns ;" Psal,
cxviii, 12, ; — to the wicked theraselves, as useless and unpro
fitable, proper objects of God's wrath, to be burned up, or
driven away by the wind — " as thorns cut up, they shall
be consumed in the fire;" Isa, xxxiu, 12, Both these ideas
seera to be joined in Psal, Iviii, 9,
" Before your pots shall feel the thorn.
As well the green as the dry, the tempest shall bear them
away,"
The green and the dry is a proverbial expression, raeaning
all sorts of them, good and bad, great and small, &c, ; so
Ezekiel: — " Behold, I will kindle a fire, and it shall de
vour every green tree, and every dry tree ;" chap, xx, 47,
D'Herbelot quotes a Persian poet describing a pestilence
under the iraage of a conflagration : — " This was a light
ning that, falling upon a forest, consumed there the green
wood vrith the dry," See Harmer, Obser, ii, p, 187,
19, — the flesh of his neighbour] " To-j fie^xxioyoinv ci^xtpov
xmo-j, LXX, Alexand, Duplex Versio, quarum altera legit
ij?l, quae vox extat Jer, vi. 21. Nam j?i, aSsMpo;, Gen. xliii.

206 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap, IX.
33, Recte, ni fallor :" Secker, I add to this exceUent
remark, that the Chaldee manifestly reads iyi, not iVir ; for
he renders it by niaiip, his neighbour. And Jeremiah has
the very same expression: ibaxi inn iii?a i2?ixi, " And
every one shall eat the flesh of his neighbour;" chap, xix.
9. This observation, I think, gives the true reading and
sense of this place ; and the context strongly confirms it, by
explaining the general idea by particular instances, in the
foUowing verse : " Every man shaU devour the flesh of his
neighbour ; (that is, they shall harass and destroy one ano
ther) ; Manasseh shaU devour Ephraim, and Ephraim
Manasseh ; (which two tribes were most closely connected
both in blood and situation, as brothers and neighbours) ;
and both of them in the midst of their own dissensions shaU
agree in preying upon Judah." The common reading,
" shaU devour the flesh of his own arm," in connexion with
what foUows, seems to make either an inconsistency, or an
anticUmax; whereas by this correction the following verse
becoraes an elegant illustration of the foregoing.

CHAPTER X,
4. Without me- — ] That is, without ray aid, they shall
be taken captive even by the captives, and shall be subdued
by the vanquished. " The i in inba is a pronoun, as in
Hos. xui. 4. :" Kimchi on the place.
5. Ho to the Assyrian — ] Here begins a new and dis
tinct prophecy ; continued to the end of the xiith chapter :
and it appears frora ver. 9—11. of this chapter, that this
prophecy was delivered after the taking of Samaria by Shal
maneser ; which was in the sixth year of the reign of Heze
kiah : and as the former part of it foretells the invasion cf
Senacherib, and the destruction of his army, which makes
the whole subject of this chapter, it must have been delivered
before the fourteenth of the same reign. '
Ibid. The staff in whose hand] The word xin in this
place seems to embarrass the sentence. I omit it on the au
thority of the Alexandrine copy of LXX ; and five MSS,
(two ancient), for xm naisi, read inao. Archbishop
Secker was not satisfied with the present reading : he pro
poses another method of clearing up the sense, by reading
Dva instead of Diia : " And he is a staff m the day of mine
indignation."

Chap. X. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 207
12. Jehovah] For i:ix, fourteen MSS, and three edi
tions, read mn*.
Ibid. — the effect — ] " ns, f. las, vid. xin. 19. sed con
fer Prov. i. 31. xxxi. 16. 31:" Secker. The Chaldee
renders the word iis by iiaip, opera ; which seems to be
the true sense ; and I have followed it.
13. — strongly — ] Twelve MSS agree with the Keri in
reading liaa without the x. And S. b. Melee and Kim
chi thus explain it : " Thera, who dwelled in a great and
strong place, I have brought down to the ground."
15. — its master] I have here given the raeaning, with
out attempting to keep to the expression of the original :
ys xb, " the no-wood;" that which is not wood like itself,
but of a quite different and superior nature. The Hebrews
have a peculiar way of joining the negative particle xb to a
noun, to signify in a strong manner a total negation of the
thing expressed by the noun.
" How hast thou given help, na xbb, to the no-strength ?
And saved the arm, rj? xb, of the no-power ?
How hast thou given counsel, njaan xbb, to the no-wisdom ?"
that is, to the man totally deprived of strength, power, and
wisdom : Job xxvi. 2, 3.
" Ye that rejoice, iai xbb, in no-thing:"
that is, in your fancied strength, which is none at all, a
mere nonentity : Amos vi. 13.
" For I am God, Ti?ix xbi, and no-man;
The Holy One in the midst of thee, yet do not frequent ci
ties." Hosea xi. 9.
" And the Assyrian shall fall by a sword, U?ix xb, of no-man ;
And a sword of, DIX xb, no-mortal shall devour him."
Isa. xxxi. 8.
"Wherefore do ye weigh out your silver, Dnb Xlba, for the
no-bread." Isa. Iv. 2.
So here yj? xb raeans him who is far from being an inert
piece of wood, but is an aniraated and active being ; not an
instruraent, but an agent.
16. Jehovah] For ijix, fifty-two MSS, and six edi
tions, read nini.
Ibid. And under his glory] That is, aU that he could
boast of as great and strong in his array; (Sal. b. Melee in
loc.) ; expressed afterwards, ver. 18. by the glory of his forest,
and of his fruitful field.

208 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. X.
17, 18. And he shall burn and consume his thorn—] The
briers and thorns are the comraon people ; the glory of his
forest are the nobles, and those of highest rank and irapor
tance. See note on chap. ix. 17. and cprapare Ezek. xx. 47.
The fire of God's wrath shall destroy them both great
and sraall, it shall consume thera fi-om the soul to the flesh .-
a proverbial expression ; soul and body, as we say ; it shall
consume them entirely and altogether. And the few that
escape shall be looked upon as having escaped from the
most imrainent danger ; -" as a firebrand plucked out of the
fire;" Amos iv. 11. 'Q;hx a-ygos, 1 Cor. iii. 15. aS a man,
when a house is burning, is forced to make his escape by
running through the midst of the fire.
I follow here the reading of the LXX; DD3 ii?xna, a; i
cpivyay x-tvo ipAoyo; xxioftiyyii. Symmachus also renders the latter
word by (pivym..
22, 23, For though thy people, O Israel — ] I have en
deavoured to keep to the letter pf the text, as nearly as I
can, in this obscure passage. But it is remarkable, that
neither the LXX, nor St Paul, Rom, ix, 28, who, except
in a few words of no great importance, follows them nearly
in this place, nor any one of the ancient versions, take any
notice of the word t^isw, over/lowing ; which seeras to give
an idea not easUy reconcileable with those with which it is
here joined, I, S, Moerlius (Schol, PhUolog, ad Selecta
S. Cod, loca) conjectures, that the two last letters of this
word are by mistake transposed, and that the true reading
is asu?, judging with strict justice. The LXX raight think
this sufficiently expressed by sv ^ixxio(rvy-/i. A MS, with St
Paul and LXX Alex, oraits ia in the 22d verse; sixty-nine
MSS, and six editions, omit ba in the 23d verse : and so St
Paul, Rom, ix, 28,
The learned Dr Bagot, dean of Christchurch, Oxford,
in some observations on this place, which he has been so
kind as to communicate to me, and which will appear in
their proper Ught when he hiraself shall give them to the
public, renders the word piba by accomplishment, and makes
it refer to the predictions of Moses ; the blessing and the
curse which he laid before the people; both conditional,
and depending on their future conduct. They had by their
disobedience incurred those judgments which were now to
be fully executed upon them. His translation is : " The
accomplishment deterrained overflows with justice; for it is

Chap. X. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 209
accomplished, and that which is deterrained the Lord God
of Hosts doeth in the midst of the land."
24. and 26, — in the way of Egypt] I think there is a
designed arabiguity in these words, Senacherib, soon after
his return frora his Egyptian expedition, which, I iraagine,
took hira up three years, invested Jerusalera, He is repre
sented by the Prophet as lifting up his rod in his march
from Egypt, and threatening the people of God, as Pharaoh
and the Egyptians had done when they pursued them to
the Red Sea, But God in his turn will lift up his rod over
the sea, as he did at that time, in the way, or after the man-
raer, of Egypt : and as Senacherib has imitated the Egyp
tians in his threats, and came full of rage against them from
the same quarter ; so God will act over again the same part
that he had taken formerly in Egypt, and overthrow their
eneraies m as signal a raanner. It was all to be, both the
attack and the deliverance, Tua, or Tua, as a MS has it in
each place, in the way, or after the manner, of Egypt,
25, mine indignation] Indignatio mea, Vulg, ; -i o^yn,
LXX ; jKs « 0^"/)) I) xxTx tra, MS, Pachom, ; fts ii o^yn xxix ns,
MS I, D, II, : so that iny», or Dytn, as a MS has it, seeras
to be the true reading,
26, And like his rod which he lifted up over the sea] The
Jewish interpreters suppose here an ellipsis ofa, the particle
of similitude, before ^nan, to be supplied frora the line
above : so that here are two sirailitudes ; one coraparing the
destruction of the Assyrians to the slaughter of the Midian
ites at the rock of Oreb ; the other to that of the Egyptians
at the Red Sea, Aben Ezra, Kimchi, Salomo b. Melee.
27, —from off your shoulders] I follow here the LXX
who, for yoM} ijsn, read Dainawn, x-rro ray Ufim vfim ; not
being able to make any good sense out of the present read
ing, I will add here the marginal conjectures of Arch
bishop Secker, who appears, like all others, to have been
at a loss for a probable interpretation of the text as it now
stands, " «. leg, Dan? ; forte legend, irni? liaa, vid, cap_v, 1,
Zech, iv, 14, Et possunt intelligi Judaei uncti Dei; Psal,
cv, 15, vel Assyrii Di5K)ii?n, hie ver, 16, ut dicat Propheta
depulsum iri jugum ab his impositura : sed hoc durius. Vel
potest legi ikti? lisn :" Secker.
28 — 32, He is come to Aiath—] A description of the
march of Senacherib's army approaching Jerusalem in order
to invest it, and of the terror and confusion spreadino- and

210 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. X.
increasing through the several places as he advanced ; ex
pressed with great brevity, but finely diversified. The places
here raentioned are all in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem ;
from Ai northward, to Nob westward of it ; from which last
place he might probably have a prospect of Mount Sion,
Anathoth was within three Roman miles of Jerusalem ; ac
cording to Eusebius, Jerom, and Josephus : Onomast, Loc,
Hebr, et Antiq, Jud, x, 7, 3, Nob probably still nearer.
And it should seera frora this passage of Isaiah, that Sena
cherib's army was destroyed near the latter of these places.
In coming out of Egypt, he might perhaps join the rest of
his army at Ashdod, after the taking of that place, which
happened about that time, (see chap, xx,) ; and march from
thence near the coast by Lachish and Libnah, which lay
in his way, from south to north, and both which he invested,
till he came to the north-west of Jerusalem ; crossing over
to the north of it, perhaps by Joppa and Lydda, or still
more north through the plain of Esdraelon,
29, They have passed the strait — ] The strait here
raentioned is that of Michmas, a T^ery narrow passage be
tween two sharp hills or rocks, (see 1 Sam, xiv, 4, 5,), where
a great army raight have been opposed with advantage by a
very inferior force. The author of the book of Judith might
perhaps mean this pass, at least among others : " Charging
them to keep the passages of the hill country ; for by them
there was an entrance into Judea, and it was easy to stop
them that would come up ; because the passage was strait,
for two men at the most:" Judith iv, 7, The enemies
having passed the strait without opposition, shews that all
thoughts of making a stand in the open country were given
up, and that their only resource was in the strength of the
city, _
Ibid, — their lodging — ] The sense seems necessarily
to require, that we read inb instead of lib. These two
words are in other places mistaken one for the other. Thus
Isa, xliv, 7, for iKib read ub, with the Chaldee: and in the
sarae manner Psal, lxiv, 6, with Syr, and Psal, lxxx, 7, on
the authority of LXX and Syr, beside the necessity of the
sense, 30, Hearken unto her, O Laish ; answer her, O Ana
thoth .'] I follow in this the Syriac version. The Prophet
plainly alludes to the name of the place ; and with a pecu
liar propriety, if it had its narae from its remarkable echo.

Chap. X. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 211
" ninjy, responsiones : eadem ratio nominls, qua in nar
nia, locus echiis ; nam hodienum ejus rudera ostenduntur
in valle, scil, in medio montium, ut referunt Robertus in
Itiner, p, 70, et Monconnysius, p, 301," Siraonis Onomas-
ticon Vet, Test,
CHAPTER XI,
The Prophet had described the destruction of the Assy
rian army under the image of a mighty forest, consisting of
flourishing trees, growing thick together, and of a great
height — of Lebanon itself crowned with lofty cedars ; but
cut down and laid level with the ground by the axe, wielded
by the hand of some powerful and illustrious agent. In op
position to this iraage he represents the great person, who
makes the subject of this chapter, as a slender twig, shooting
out from the trunk of an old tree, cut down, lopped to the
very root, and decayed ; which tender plant, so weak in ap
pearance, should nevertheless become fruitful and prosper.
This contrast shows plainly the connexion between this and
the preceding chapter ; which is moreover expressed by the
connecting particle : And we have here a remarkable instance
of that method so common with the Prophets, and particu
larly with Isaiah, of taking occasion, from the mention of
some great temporal deliverance, to launch out into the
display of the spiritual deliverance of God's people by the
Messiah: for tliat this prophecy relates to the Messiah,
we have the express authority of St Paul, Rom, xv, 12,
" Conjungit Parasciara hanc, quae respicit dies futures
Messise, cura fiducia, quae fuit in diebus Ezekiae :" Kirachi
in ver, 1, Thus, in the latter part of Isaiah's prophecies, the
subject of the great redemption, and of the glories of Mes
siah's kingdom, arises out of the restoration of Judah by the
deliverance from the captivity of Babylon, and is all along
connected and intermixed with it,
4, By the blast of his mouth] For aaii?a, by the rod,
Houbigant reads nawa, by the blast of his raouth, from
ai2?3, to blow. The conjecture is ingenious and probable;
and seems to be confirmed by the LXX and Chaldee, who
render it, by the word of his mouth ; which answers rauch
better to the correction than to the present reading. Add
to this, that the blast of his mouth, is perfectly parallel to
the breath of his lips in the next line. '

212 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XI.
5. — the cincture — ] All the ancient versions, except
that of Symraachus, have two different words for girdle in
the two heraistichs. It is not probable that Isaiah would
-have repeated iiTX, when a synonyraous word so obvious as
lUn occurred. The tautology seeras to have arisen from
the mistake of some transcriber. The meaning of this verse
is, that a zeal for justice and truth shall make him active
and strong in executing the great work which he shall un
dertake. See note on chap, v, 27.
6 — 8. Then shall the wolf- — ] The idea of the renewal
of the golden age, as it is called, is much the same in the
oriental writers with that of the Greeks and Romans : the
wild beasts grow tame ; serpents and poisonous herbs become
harmless ; all is peace and harmony, plenty and happiness :
" Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni
Occidet." " Nee magnos metuent armenta leones,"

" Nee lupus insidias pecori  ," Virg,
" Nee vespertinus circumgemit ursus-ovile,
Nee intumescit alta viperis humus," Hor,
" E5-«( ^1) tst' Xfix^, o-ir-tfiixx vsSjov £1/ ivyx
Kx^X'^i'^"^ <r'yiirSxi i^m Xvxoi Hx sSlXwU." TheoC,
I have laid before the reader these common passages
from the most elegant of the ancient poets, that he may see
how greatly the Prophet on the" same subject has the advan
tage upon the cpmparison ; how rauch the forraer fall short
of that beauty and elegance, and variety of iraagery, with
which Isaiah has set forth the very same ideas. The wolf
and the leopard not only forbear to destroy the lamb and
the kid, but even take their abode and lie down together
with them. The calf, and the young lion, and the fatling,
not only come together, but are led quietly in the same band,
and that by a little child. The heifer and the she-bear not
only feed together, but even lodge their young ones, for
whom they used to be most jealously fearful, in the same
place. All the serpent kind is so perfectly harmless, that the
sucking infant, and the newly weaned child, puts his hand
on the basilisk's den, and plays upon the hole of the aspic.
The lion not only abstains from preying on the weaker ani
mals, but becomes tame and domestic, and feeds on straw
like the ox. These are all beautiful circumstances, not
one of which has been touched upon by the ancient poets.

Chap. XI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 213
The Arabian and Persian poets elegantly apply the same
ideas, to shew the effects of justice impartially administered,
and firmly supported, by a great and good king :
" Rerum dominus Mahmud, rex potens ;
Ad cujus aquam potum veniunt simul agnus et lupus." Ferdusi,
" Justitia, a qua mansuetus fit lupus fame astrictus,
Esuriens, licet hinnuleum candidum videat," Ibn Onein.
Jones, Poes. Asiat. Comment, p, 380,
The application is extremely ingenious and beautiful ; but
the exquisite imagery of Isaiah is not equaUed,
7, Together-—] Here a word is omitted in the text,
nni, together; which ought to be repeated in the second
hemistich, being- quite necessary to the sense. It is accord
ingly twice expressed by the LXX, and Syr,
10, The root of Jesse, which standeth — ] St John hath
taken this expression from Isaiah, Rev, v, 5, and xxu, 16,
where Christ hath twice applied it to himself. Seven MSS
have mi:?, the present participle, " Radix Isaei dicitur
jam stare, et aliquantura stetisse, in signura populorum :"
Vitringa, Which rightly explains either of the two read
ings, 11, Jehovah] For ijix, thirty-three MSS, and two
editions, read nini-
11 — 16, And it shall come to pass in that day — ] This
part of the chapter contains a prophecy, which certainly
remains yet to be accoraplished. See Lowth on the place,
13, And the enmity of Judah — ] Diiis, " Postulat pars
posterior versus, ut intelligantur inimicitice Judae in Eph-
raimura : — et potest Dms iniraicitiara notare, ut Dinn3
poenitentiara, Hos, xi, 8 :" Secker,
15, smite with a dvought — ] The Chaldee reads aimn ;
and so perhaps LXX, who have i^itftatru, the word by which
they commonly render it, Vulg, desolabit. The LXX,
Vulg, and Chald. read inaiiin, "shall make it passable,"
adding the pronoun, which is necessary.
Here is a plain allusion to the passage of the Red Sea,
And the Lord's shaking his hand over the river with his
vehement wind, refers to a particular circumstance of the
same miracle : for " he caused the sea to go back by a
strong east wind aU that night, and made the sea dry land :"
Exod, xiv, 21, The tongue ; a very apposite and descrip
tive expression for a bay. Such as that of the Red Sea : it is
s

214 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XI.
used in the same sense. Josh, xv, 2, 5, xviii, 19, The
Latins gave the same name to a narrow strip of land run
ning into the sea : " tenuem producit in sequora linguam :"
Lucan, ii, 613, ^
Herodotus, i, 189, teUs a story of his Cyrus, (a very diffe
rent character from that of the Cyrus of the Scriptures and
Xenophon), which may soraewhat Ulustrate this passage;
in which it is said, that God would inflict a kind of punish
ment and judgment on the Euphrates, a.nd render it ford-
able, by diriding it into seven streams, " Cyrus being
impeded in his march to Babylon by the Gyndes, a deep
and rapid river which falls into the Tigris, and having lost
one of his sacred white horses that attempted to pass it, was
so enraged against the river, that he threatened to reduce
it, and make it so shaUow, that it should be easily fordable
even by women, who should not be up to their knees in
passing it. Accordingly, he set his whole array to work;
and, cutting three hundred and sixty trenches, from both
sides of the river, turned the waters into thera, and drained
thera off,"
CHAPTER XII,
This hymn seems, by its whole tenor, and by many ex
pressions in it, much better calculated for the use of the
Christian church, than for the Jewish in any circumstances,
or at any time, that can be assigned. The Jews themselves
seem to have applied it to the times of Messiah, On the
last day of the feast of tabernacles, they fetched water in a
golden pitcher from the fountain of Siloah, springing at the
foot of Mount Sion without the city : they brought it through
the water-gate into the temple, and poured it, mixed with
wine, on the sacrifice as it lay upon the altar, with great rejoic
ing. They seem to have taken iip this custom, for it is not
ordained in the law of Moses, as an emblem of future bless
ings, in allusion to this passage of Isaiah, " Ye shaU draw
waters with joy from the fountains of salvation :" expres
sions, that can hardly be understood of any benefits afforded
by the Mosaic dispensation. Our Saviour appUed the cere
mony, and the intention of it, to hiraself, and to the effu
sion of the Holy Spirit, promised, and to be given, by him.
The sense of the Jews in this matter is plainly shewn by the
foUowing passage of the Jerusalem Talmud : " Why is it

Chap. Xtl. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 215
called the place, or house, of drawing ?" (for that was the
term for this cereraony, or for the place where the water
was taken up) : " Because from thence they draw the Holy
Spirit; as it is written. And ye shaU draw water with joy
from the fountains of salvation," See Wolf, Curas Philol,
in N, T, on John vii, 37, 39,
1, for, though thou hast been angry — ] The Hebrew
phrase, to which the LXX, Vulg, and our translation, have
too closely adhered, is exactly the sarae with that of St Paul,
Rom, vi, 17, " But thanks be to God, that ye were the slaves
of sin ; but have obeyed from the heart"^ — that is, " that,
whereas, or though, ye were the slaves of sin ; yet ye have
now obeyed from the heart the doctrine, on the raodel of
which ye were forraed,"
2, — my song — ] The pronoun is here necessary ; and
it is added by LXX, Vulg, Syr, who read ininr ; as it is in
a MS, Two MSS omit m : See Houbigant, not. in loc.
Another MS has it in one word, nininr. Seven others
omit nini. See Exod, xv, 2, with Var, Leet. Kennicott.

CHAPTERS XIIL & XIV.
These two chapters (striking off the five last verses of the
latter, which belong to a quite different subject), contain
one entire prophecy, foretelling the destruction of Babylon
by the Medes and Persians ; delivered probably in the reign
of Ahaz, (see Vitringa, i, 380,), about 200 years before the
completion of it. The captivity itself of the Jews at Baby
lon, (which the Prophet does not expressly foreteU, but
supposes, in the spirit of prophecy, as what was actually to
be effected), did not fully take place till about 130 years
after the delivery of this prophecy: and the Medes, who
are expressly mentioned, chap, xiii, 17, as the principal
agents in the overthrow of the Babylonian monarchy, by
which the Jews were released frora that captivity, were at
this tirae an inconsiderable people ; having been in a state
of anarchy ever since the fall of the great Assyrian Empire,
of which they had made a part, under Sardanapalus, and
did not become a kingdom under Deioces till about the
17th of Hezekiah,
The former part of this prophecy is one of the most
beautiful exaraples, that can be given, of elegance of com-

216 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XIII.
position, variety of imagery, and sublimity of sentiment and
diction, in the prophetic style ; and the latter part consists
of an ode of suprerae and singular excellence.
The prophecy opens with the coramand of God to gather
together the forces which he had destined to this serrice,
ver, 2, 3, Upon which the Prophet immediately hears the
tumultuous noise of the different nations crowding tpgedier
to his standard ; he sees them advancing, prepared to exe-
cut» the divine wrath, ver, 4, 5, He proceeds to describe
the dreadful consequences of this visitation ; the consterna
tion which will seize those that are the objects of it; and,
transferring unawares the speech from himself to God, ver,
II, sets forth, under a variety of the most striking images,
the dreadful destruction of the inhabitants of Babylon which
will follow, ver, 11 — 16,; and the everlasting desolation to
which that great city is dooraed, ver, 17 — 22,
The deliverance of Judah from captivity, the immediate
consequence of tlus great revolution, is then set forth, with
out being much enlarged upon, or greatly amplified ; chap,
xiv, 1, 2, This introduces, with the greatest ease, and the
utmost propriety, the triumphant song on that subject, ver,.
4 — 28, The beauties of which, the various images, scenes,
persons introduced, and the eleganl transitions from one to
another, I shall here endeavour to point out in their order ;
leaving a few remarks upon particular passages of these two
chapters to be given, after these general observations on the
whole, A chorus of Jews is introduced, expressing their surprise
and astonishment at the sudden downfall of Babylon, and
the great reverse of fortune that had befallen the tyrant,
who, like his predecessors, had oppressed his own, and ha
rassed the neighbouring kingdoms. These oppressed king
doms, or their rulers, are represented under the image of
*the fir-trees and the cedars of Libanus, frequently used to
express any thing in the political or religious world that is
supereminently great and majestic : the whole earth shouteth
for joy ; the cedars of Libanus utter a severe taunt over the
fallen tyrant, and boast their security now he is no more.
The scene is immediately changed ; and a new set of per
sons is introduced : The -regions of the dead are laid open,
and Hades is represented as rousing up the shades of the
departed monarchs: they rise from their thrones to meet
the. king of Babylon at his coraing; and insult him on his

Chap. XIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 817
being reduced to the same low estate of impotence and dis
solution vrith theraselves. This is one of the boldest proso
popoeias that ever was attempted in poetry ; and is executed
with astonishing brevity and perspicuity, and with that pe
cuhar force which in a great subject naturaUy results frora
both. The iraage of the state of the dead, or the Infernum
Poeticura of the Hebrews, is taken from their custom of
burying, those at least of the higher rank, in large sepulchral
vaults hewn in the rock. Of this kind of sepulchres there
are remains at Jerusalem now extant ; and some that are
said to be the sepulchres of the kings of Judah : see Maun
drell, p. 76. You are to form to yourself an idea of an
imraense subterraneous vault, a vast glooray cavern, l all
round the sides of which there are cells to receive the dead
bodies : Here the deceased monarchs lie in a distinguished
sort of state, suitable to their former rank, each on his own
couch, with his arms beside him, his sword at his head, and
the bodies of his chiefs and companions round about him :
see Ezek. xxxii. 27. On which place Sir John Chardin's
MS note is as follows : — " En Mingrelie ils dorment tous
leur epee sous leurs tetes, et leurs autres armes a leur cote ;
et on les enterre de raesine, leurs arraes posees de cette
fa^on," These illustrious shades rise at once from-their
couches, as frora , their thrones ; and advance to the en
trance of the cavern to meet the king of Babylon, and to
receive him with insults on his fall.
The Jews now resume the speech : They address the king
of Babylon as the morning-star fallen from heaven, as the
first in splendour and dignity in the political world fallen
frora his high state: they introduce him as uttering the
most extravagant vaunts of his power and ambitious designs
in his forraer glory: these are strongly contrasted in the
close vrith his present low and abject condition,
Iramediately follows a different scene, and a most happy
image, to diversify th^ sarae subject, to give it a new turn
and an additional force. Certain persons are introduced,
who light upon the corpse of the king of Babylon, cast out
and lying naked on the bare ground, araong the common
slain, just after the taking of the city; covered with wounds,
and so disfigured, that it is sorae time before they know hira.
They accost hira with the severest taunts, and bitterly re
proach hira with his destructive arabition, and his cruel
usage of the conquered; which have deservedly brought

218 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XIII.
upon him this ignominious treatment, so different from that
which those of his rank usually meet with, and which shall
cover his posterity with disgrace.
To complete the whole, God is introduced, declaring the
fate of Babylon, the utter extirpation of the royal family,
and the total desolation of the city ; the deliverance of his
people, and the dei^ttuctipn of their enemies; confirming
the irreversible decree by the awful sanction of his oath.
I believe it may vrith truth be affirmed, that there is no
poem of its kind extant in any language, in which the sub
ject is so well laid out, and so happily conducted, with such
a richness of invention, with such variety of images, persons,
and distinct actions, -vrith such rapidity and ease of transi
tion, in so small a compass, as in this ode of Isaiah, For
beauty of disposition, strength of colouring, greatness of sen
timent, brevity, perspicuity, and force of expression, it stands
among all the monuments of antiquity unrivalled,
2, Exalt the voice — ] The word Dnb, to them, which is
of no use, and rather weakens the sentence, is omitted by an
ancient MS and Vulg.
4, —for the battle] The Bodley MS has nnnbnb, Cy
rus's army was made up of raany different nations. Jere
miah calls it "an assembly of great nations from the north
country," chap, 1. 9, And afterwards mentions the king
doms of " Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz, [i. e, Armenia,
Corduene, Pontus vel Phrygia; Vitring,), with the kings of
the Medes ;" chap. Ii. 27, 28. See Xenophon. Cyrop.
8. — and they shall be terrified] I join this verb, ibnail,
to the preceding verse, with Syr. and Vulo-.
Ibid, pangs shall seize them] The LXX, Syr, and
Chald, read Dimxi, instead of pmxs which does not ex
press the pronoun them, necessary to the sense.
10, Yea, the stars of heaven— ] The Hebrew poets, to
express happiness, prosperity, the instauration and advance-'
ment of states, kingdoras, and potentates, make use of images
taken from the most striking parts of nature — from the hea
venly bodies, from the sun, moon, and stars ; which they
describe as shining with increased splendour, and never set
ting ; the moon becomes like the meridian sun, and the sun's
light is augmented sevenfold ; see Isa, xxx, 26, : new heavens
and a new earth are created, and a brighter age commences.
On die contrary, the overthrow and destruction of king
doms is represented by opposite images : the stars'are ob-

Chap. XIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 219
scured; the moon withdraws her light, and the sun shines no
raore ; the earth quakes, and the heavens tremble ; and all
things seem tending to their original chaos. See Joel ii,
10, ui, 15, 16, Amos viu, 9. Matth, xxiv, 29, and De S,
Poes, Hebr, Prael, vi, and ix,
11, I will visit the world] That is, the Babylonish em
pire : as « oixufoiyvi, for the Roman empire, or for Judea ;
Luke ii, 1, Acts xi, 28, So, universus orbis Romanus, for
the Roman empire ; Salvian, lib, v, Minos caUs Crete his
world : " Creten, quae meus est orbis ;" Ovid, Metamorph.
viii, 99,
14, And the remtiant — ] Here is plainly a defect in this
sentence, as it stands in the Hebrew text; the subject of the
proposition is lost. What is it, that shall be like a roe
chased ? Thg LXX happUy supply it : «' xxTxXiMififnyoc, ixu?,
the remnant. A MS here supplies the word airii, the inha
bitant, which raakes a tolerably good sense; but I rauch
prefer the reading of the LXX,
Ibid, They shall look — ] That is, the forces of the king
of Babylon, destitute of their leader, and all his auxiliaries,
coUected frora Asia Minor and other distant countries, shall
disperse, and flee to their respective homes,
15, Every one that is overtaken — ] That is, none shall
escape from the slaughter ; neither they who flee singly, dis
persed and in confusion ; nor they who endeavour to make
their retreat in a more regular maniier, by forming compact
bodies — they shall all be equaUy cut off by the sword of the
enemy. The LXX have understood it in this sense ; which
they have well expressed : —
'^ Oj yx^ ay xXai i-flvidifiirilxt,
Kxi etrty£g G-vyyiy^iyot eicri srso-aylxi ftxxxtpx."
Where for inlnhirilxi, MS Pachom, has ixxivS-zio-irxi ; and oi
r Cod, Marchal, in margine, and MS i, D, ii, ixxiyryiSfi^iTxi :
which seems to be right, being properly expressive of the
Hebrew, 17, Who shall hold silver of no account] That is, who
shall not be induced, by large offers of gold and silver for
ransom, to spare tne lives of those whom they have subdued
in battle : their rage and cruelty will get the* better of all
such raotives. We have many examples in the Iliad and in
the .Sneid of addresses of the vanquished to the pity and
avarice of the vanquishers, to induce .them to spare their
lives.

2-20 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XIII.
" Est domus alta : jacent penitus defossa talenta
Cselati argenti: sunt auri pondera facti
Infectique mihi : non hie victoria Teucrum
Vertitur ; aut anima una dabit discrimina tanta,
Dixerat : Mneas contra cui talia reddit :
Argenti atque auri memoras quae multa talenta
Gnatis parce tuis," Mn. x, 526.
" High in my dome are silver talents roll'd.
With piles of labour'd and unlabour'd gold ;
These, to procure my ransom, 1 resign ;
The war depends not on a life like mine :
One, one poor life can no such difference yield,
Nor turn the mighty balance of the field.
Thy talents, (cried the prince), thy treasur'd store,
Keep for thy sons," Pitt,
It is remarkable, that Xenophon makes Cyrus open a
speech to his army, and in particular to the Mede.s, who
made the principal part of it, vrith praising them for their
disregard of riches, AvJ^s; Mii^oi, xxi ztxiti; oi ux^oy-n;, lyu Vfucs
tiax (rx(pas, on yn ^^Dfixray ^ofnyoi o-ut iftot t^tiXiin i- — " Ye Medes,
and others who now hear me, I well know that you have
not accompanied me in this expedition with a view of ac
quiring wealth :" Cyrop, lib, v,
18, Their bows shall dash — ] Both Herodotus, i, 61,
and Xenophon, Anab, iii, mention, that the Persians used
large bows, to|« fnyxXx : and the latter says particularly, that
their bows were three cubits long ; Anab, iv. They were
celebrated for their archers : see chap, xxii. 6, Jer, xlix, 35,
Probably their neighbours and allies, the Medes, dealt rauch
in the same sort of arms. In Psal, xviii, 35, and Job xx,
24, raention is made of a bow of brass : If the Persian bows
were of metal, we may easily conceive, that with a metalline
bow of three cubits length, and proportionably strong, the
soldiers might dash and slay the young men, the weaker &nd
unresisting part of the inhabitants, (for they are joined with
the fruit of the womb and the children), in the general car
nage on taking the city,
18, And on the fruit— ] A MS reads ii3 byi. And
nine MSS (three ancient) and two editions, with LXX,
Vulg, Syr. add likewise the conjunction i to by afterward.
19, And Babylon] The great city of Babylon was at this
time rising to its height of glory, whUe the Prophet Isaiah
was repeatedly denouncing its utter destruction, From the
first of Hezekiah to the first of Nebuchadnezzar, under

Chap. XIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 221
whora it was brought to the highest degree of strength and
splendour, are about one hundred and twenty years, I will
here very briefly mention some particulars of the greatness
of the place, and . note the several steps by which this re
raarkable prophecy was at length accoraplished in the total
ruin of it, ,
It was, according to the lowest account given of it by
ancient historians, a regular square, forty-five railes in cora-
pass, enclosed by a wall two hundred feet high, fifty broad ;
in which there were a hundred gates of brass. Its principal
ornaments were the temple of Belus, in the middle of which
was a tower of eight stories of building, upon a base of a
quarter of a mile square; a raost magnificent palace ; and the
famous hanging gardens ; which were an artificial mountain,
raised upon arches, and planted with trees of the largest as
well as the raost beautiful sorts,
Cyrus took the city by diverting the waters of the Eu
phrates, which ran through the midst of it, and entering the
place at night by the dry channel. The river, being never
restored afterward to its proper course, overflowed the whole
country, and made it litde better than a great morass : This,
and the great slaughter of the inhabitants, with other bad
consequences of the taking of the city, was the first step to
the ruin of the place. The Persian monarchs ever regarded
it with a jealous eye ; they kept it under, and took care to
prevent its recovering its former greatness, Darius Hystas-
pis not long afterward raost severely punished it for a re
volt, gready depopulated the place, lowered the walls, and
deraolished the gates, Xerxes destroyed the temples, and
with the rest the great temple of Belus : Herod, iii, 159,
Arrian, Exp, Alexandri, lib, vii. The buUding of Seleucia
on the Tigris exhausted Babylon by its neighbourhood, as
weU as by the iraraediate loss of inhabitants taken away by
Seleucus to people his new city : .S.trabo, lib, xvi, A king
of the Parthians soon after carried away into slavery a great
number of the inhabitants, and burnt and destroyed the
most beautiful parts of the city : Valesii Excerpt, Diodori
p, 377, Strabo (ibid,) says, that in his time great part of
it was a mere desert; that the Persians had partly destroyed
it; and that tirae, and the neglect of the Macedonians, while
they were raasters of it, had nearly corapleted its destruction,
Jerom (in loc) says, that in his time it was quite in ruins
and that the walls served only for the inclosure of a park or

222 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XIII.
forest for the king's hunting. Modern travellers, who have
endeavoured to find the remains of it, have given but a very
unsatisfactory account of their success : what Benjamin of
Tudela and Pietro della Valle supposed to have been some
of its ruins, Tavernier thinks are the remains of some late
Arabian building. Upon the whole, Babylon is so utterly
annihilated, that even the place where this wonder of the
world stood, cannot now be 'determined with any certainty.
See also note on chap, xliii, 14,
We are astonished at the accounts which ancient histo
rians of the best credit give, of the iraraense extent, height,
and thickness of the walls of Nineveh ahd Babylon : nor are
we less astonished when we are assured, by the concurrent
testimony of raodern travellers, that no remains, not the
least traces, of these prodigious works are now to be found.
Our wonder will, I think, be moderated in both respects, if
we consider the fabric of these celebrated walls, and the na
ture of the materials of which they consisted. Buildings in
the East have always been, and are to this day, made of earth
or clay, mixed or beat up with straw, to make the parts
cohere, and dried only in the sun. This is their method of
making bricks : see note on chap, ix. 9. The walls of the
city were buUt of the earth digged out on the spot, and dried
upon the place ; by which means both the ditch and the wall
were at once formed; the former furnishing materials for
the latter. That the walls of Babylon were of this kind is
well known; and Berosus expressly says, (apud Joseph.
Antiq. x. 11.), that Nebuchadnezzar added three new walls
both to the old and new city, pardy of brick and bitumen,
and partly of brick alone. A waU of this sort must have a
great thickness in proportion to its height, otherwise it can
not stand. The thickness of the walls of Babylon is said to
have been one-fourth of their height, which seems to have
been no more than was absolutely necessary. Maundrell,
speaking of the garden walls of Damascus, — " They are,"
says he, "of a very singular structure. They are built of
great pieces of earth, made in the fashion of brick, and
hardened in the sun. In their dimensions they are two
yards long each, and somewhat more than one broad, and
half a yard thick." And afterward, speaking of the walls of
the houses : — " From this dirty way of buUding they have
this amongst other inconveniences, that upon any violent
rain the whole city becomes, by the washing of the houses, as
it were a quagmire," p. 124, ; and see note on chap, xxx, 13.

Chap. XIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 223
When a wall of this sort comes to be out of repair, and
is neglected, it is easy to conceive the necessary conse
quences ; namely, that in no long course of ages it must be
totally destroyed by the heavy rains, and at length washed
away, and reduced to its original earth,
22. — in their palaces] vnisnbxa, a plain mistake, I
presume, for iinumxa. It is so corrected in one MS,
" na?iw7riiSs5 dsv tfui d-xhxfixi, (puxxm fiiXxiyxi,
Oixtx -aroiwonxi xxy^ix, jjhtei a««»." Homer. Hymn, in Apol. 77,
Of which the following passage of Milton may be taken for
a translation, though not so designed : —
" And in their palaces,
Where luxury late reign'd, sea-monsters whelp'd,
And stabled." P. L. xi. 750.
CHAPTER XIV.
1, And will yet choose Israel.] That is, will still regard
Israel as his chosen people ; however he may seem to desert
them, by giving them up to their enemies, and scattering
them among the nations, Judah is sometiraes called Israel ;
see Ezek, xin, 16, Mal,i, 1, ii, 11,; but die name of Jacob,
and of Israel, used apparently with design in this place,
each of which naraes includes the twelve tribes, and the
other circumstances mentioned in this and the next verse,
which did not in any complete sense accorapany the return
frora the captivity of Babylon ; seem to intimate, that this
whole prophecy extends its views beyond that event,
3, — in that day] xinn DVa, "The word xin n is added
in two MSS, and. was in the copies from which the LXX
and Vulg, translated : sn rii lifts^a sx£<vti, in die ilia, (tj' xyx-rtxvs-u,
MS Pachom, adding if). This is a matter of no great con
sequence : however, it restores the text to the common form
alraost constantly used on such occasions ; and is one among
many instances of a word lost out of the printed copies,
4, — this parable — ] Mashal. I take this to be the ge
neral name for poetic style among the Hebrews, including
every sort of it, as ranging under one, or other, or aU of the
characters, of sententious, figurative, and sublime • which
are all contained in the original notion, or in the use and
application of the word mashal. Parables or proverbs,
such as those of Solomon, are always expressed in short
pointed sentences ; frequently figurative, being formed on

224. NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XIV.
some comparison ; generally forcible and authoritative, both
in the matter and the form. And such in general is the
style of the Hebrew poetry. The verb mashal signifies to
rule, to exercise authority ; to make equal, to compare one
thing with another; to utter parables, or acute, weighty,
and powerful speeches, in the form and manner of parables,
though not- properly such. Thus Balaam's first prophecy,
Numb, xxiii, 7 — 10, is called his mashal; though it, has
hardly any thing figurative in it : but it is beautifaUy sen
tentious, and, frora the very forra and manner of it, has
great spirit, force, and energy. Thus Job's last speeches,
in answer to the three friends, chap, xxvii — xxxi, are called
mashals ; from no one particular character which discrimi
nates them from the rest of the poera, but frora the sublime,
the figurative, the sententious manner, which equally pre
vails through the whole poera, and raakes it one of the first
and most eminent examples extant of the truly great and
beautiful in poetic style.
The LXX in this place render the word by ^er,yoi, a la
mentation. They plainly consider the speech here intro
duced as a piece of poetry ; and of that species of poetry
which we call the elegiac — either from the subject, it being
a poem on the fall and death of the king of Babylon ; or
from the form of the composition, which is of the longer
sort of Hebrew verse, in which the Lamentations of Jere
miah, called by the LXX.%>i»o(> are written,
11, — thy covering] Twenty-eight MSS (ten ancient)
and seven editions, with the LXX and Vulg, read loaiai,
in the singular number,
12, O Lucifer, son of the morning] See note on xiii, 10,
13, the mount of the divine presence — ] It appears
plainly from Exod, xxv, 22, and xxix, 42, 43, where God
appoints the place of meeting with Moses, and promises to
meet with him before the ark, to commune with him, and
to speak unto him ; and to meet the chUdren of Israel at the
door of the tabernacle ; that the tabernacle, and afterward
the temple, and Mount Sion, (or Moriah, which is reckoned
a part of Sion), whereon it stood, was called the tabernacle,
and the mount, of convention, or of appointment ; not from
the people's assembling there to perform the services of their
religion, (which is what our translation expresses by caUing
it the tabernacle of the congregation), but because God ap
pointed that for the place where he himself would meet with

Chap. XIV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 225
Moses, and coramune with him, and would meet with the
people. Therefore, lyin in, or lyin bnx, raeans the
place appointed by God, where he would present himself;
agreeably to which I have rendered it, in this place, the
mount of the divine presence.'
19, -—like the tree abominated] That is, as an object of
abomination and detestation ; such as the tree is on which a
raalefactor has been hanged. " It is written," saith St Paul,
Gal, iii, 13, " Cursed is every raan that hangeth on a tree;"
from Deut, xxi, 23, The Jews therefore held also as ac
cursed and poUuted the tree itself on which a malefactor had
been executed, or on which he had been hanged after having
been put to death by stoning, " Non suspendunt super
arbore, quae radicibus solo adhaereat; sed super ligno era-
dicato, ut ne sit excisio molesta: nara lignum, super quo
fuit aliquis suspensus, cum suspendioso sepelitur ; ne maneat
illi malum nomen, et dicant homines, Istud est lignum, in
quo suspensus est ille, » Ss*™, Sic lapis, quo aliquis fuit la-
pidatus ; et gladius, quo fuit occisus is qui est occisus ; et
sudariura sive raantile, quo fuit aliquis strangulatus ; orania
haec cum iis, qui perierunt, sepeliuntur :" Maimonides,
apud Casaub, in Baron, Exercitat, xvi. An, 34, Num. 134,
" Cum itaque homo suspensus maxiraae esset abominationi —
Judaei quoque prae caeteris abominabantur lignum quo fuerat
suspensus, ita ut illud quoque terra tegerent, "tanquam rera
aborainabilem, Unde Interpres Chaldaeus heec verba trans-
tulit 1112a ana, sicut virgultura absconditura, sive sepul-
tum :" KaUnski, Vaticinia Observationibus illustrata, p, 342,
Agreeably to which, Theodoret, Hist, Ecclesiast, i, 17, 18.
in his account of the finding of the cross by Helena, says,
that the three crosses were buried in the earth near the place
of our Lord's sepulchre.
Ibid. — clothed with the slain.] Thirty-five MSS (ten
ancient), and three editions, have the word fully written,
ii?iab. It is not a noun, but the participle passive : thrown
out among the coramon slain, and covered with the dead
bodies. So ver. 11, the earth-worm is said to be his bed-
covering, 20, Because thou hast destroyed thy country ; thou hast
slain thy people.] Xenophon gives an instance of this king's
wanton cruelty in killing the son of Gobrias, on no other
provocation than that, in hunting, he struck a boar .and a
lion, which the king had missed : Cyrop, iv, p, 309.

226 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XIV,
23. / will plunge it — ] I have here very nearly followed
the version of the LXX : the reasons for which see in the
last note on De Poesi Hebr. Praelect. xxviii.
25. To crush the Assyrian — on my mountains] The As
syrians and Babylonians are the same people : Herod, i. 199,
200. Babylon is reckoned the principal city in Assyria:
ibid. 178. Strabo says the same thing; lib. xvi. sub init.
The circumstance of this judgment's being to be executed
on God's mountains is of importance: it may mean the
destruction of Senacherib's army near Jerusalem ; and have
still a further view : Compare Ezek, xxxix, 4, ; and see Lowth
on this place of Isaiah,
28, Uzziah had subdued the PhUistines, 2 Chron, xxvi,
6, 7, ; but taking advantage of the weak reign of Ahaz, they
invaded Judea, and took and held in possession sorae cities
in the southern part of the kingdom. On the death of
Ahaz, Isaiah delivers this prophecy, threatening them with
the destruction that Hezekiah, his son, and great-grandson
of Uzziah, should bring upon thera : which he effected ; for
" he sraote the PhUistines, even unto Gaza, and the borders
thereof;" 2 Kings xviii, 8, Uzziah therefore raust he
meant by the rod that sraote them, and by the serpent, from
whom should spring the flying fiery serpent ; that is, Heze
kiah, a much more terrible enemy than even Uzziah had
been, 30, — he will slay] The LXX read ninn, in the third
person, avsAsj; and so Chald, The Vulgate remedies the
confusion of persons in the present text, by reading both
the verbs in the first person,
31, From the north cometh a smoke] That is, a cloud of
dust, raised by the march of Hezekiah's army against Phi
listia; which lay to the south-west from Jerusalem, A great
dust raised has, at a distance, the appearance of smoke :
" fumantes pulvere campi :" Virg, .^n, xi, 908,
32, — to the ambassadors of the nations] The LXX read
Dii:i, iiiay, plural; and so the Chaldee, and one MS, The
ambassadors of die neighbouring nations, that send to con
gratulate Hezekiah on his success ; which in his answer he
wUl ascribe to the protection of God, See 2 Chron, xxxii,
23, Or, if 11:1, singular, the reading of the text, be prefer
red, the ambassadors sent by the PhUistines to demand
peace.

Chap. XV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 227

CHAPTER XV,
This and the following chapter, taken together, make
one entire prophecy, very improperly divided into two parts.
The time of the delivery, and consequently of the comple
tion of it, which was to be in three years from that time, is
uncertain ; the forraer not being marked in the prophecy
itself, nor the latter recorded in history. But the most pro
bable account is, that it was delivered soon after the fore
going, in the first year of Hezekiah ; and that it was accom
plished in his fourth year, when Shalmaneser invaded the
kingdom of Israel, He might probably march through
Moab ; and, to secure every thing behind him, possess him
self of the whole country, by taking their principal strong
places, Ar and Kirhares,
Jereraiah has happily introduced rauch of this prophecy
of Isaiah into his own larger prophecy against the sarae peo
ple in his xlviiith chapter ; denouncing God's judgments on
Moab, subsequent to the calamity here foretold, and to be
executed by Nebuchadnezzar : by which means several mis
takes in the present text of both Prophets may be rectified,
1, Because in the night-^] biba. That both these cities
should be taken in the night, is a circumstance soraewhat
unusual ; and not so material as to deserve to be so strongly
insisted upon, Vitringa, by his remark on this word, shews,
that he was dissatisfied with it in its plain and obvious mean
ing ; and is forced to have recourse to a very hard metapho
rical interpretation of it : " Noctu, vel iiocturno impetu ;
vel metaphorice, repente, subito, inexpectata destructione :
placet posterius," Calraet conjectures, and I think it pro
bable, that the true reading is biba. There are many rais
takes in the Hebrew text arising from the very great simili
tude of the letters a and a, which in many MSS, and even
in sorae printed editions, are hardly distinguishable. Ad
mitting this reading, the translation will be : —
" Because Ar is utterly destroyed, Moab is undone !
Because Kir is utterly destroyed, Moab is undone !"
2. Beth-Dibon .- — ] This is the name of one place ; and
the two words are to be joined together, without the i in
tervening : so Chald. and Syr.
Ibid. — on every head] For vivxi, read ii?xi. So the
parallel place, Jer. xlviii. 37. and so three MSS (one an
cient). All ancient MS reads wxi ba bj?.

2-28 NOTES ON ISAIAH. CHap. XV.
Ibid. On every head there is baldness, and every beard is
shorn.] Herodotus, ii. 36. speaks of it as a general practice
among all men, except the Egjrpuans, to cut off their hair
as a token of mourning, " Cut off thy hair and cast it
away," says Jereiniah, vii, 29, " and take up a lamentation,"
Tbts »u kxi ysg«5 oioy o'l^v^oiiri /i^oTOKri
Kii^x<r6xi n xoft-0, fixXmy t xtco S»Kgu irxf%iay. Horn, Od, iv, 197,
" The rites of woe
Are all, alas I the living can bestow ;
O'er the congenial dust enjoin'd to shear
The graceful curl, and drop the tender tear,'' Pope,
Ibid, — shorn — ] The printed editions, as well as the
MSS, are divided on the reading of this word : some have
n:i?ilJ, others nyu. The similitude of the letters n and
1 has likewise occasioned many mistakes. In the present
case, the sense is pretty much the same with either reading,
Tlie text of Jer, xlviii, 37, has the latter,
4, — the very loins — ] So the LXX, « o^<pvi, and Syr,
They cry out violently, with, their utraost force,
5, The heart of Moab crieth within her.] For lab, LXX
read lab, or ab ; the Chald, lab. For n.iniia, Syr, reads
nniia ; and so likewise the LXX, rendering it £» xm\^. Edit,
Vat, or e» ixvtn. Edit, Alex, and MS i, D, ii.
Ibid, — a young heifer] Heb, a heifer three years old,
in full strength; as Horace uses equa trima, for a young
mare just coraing to her prirae, Bochart observes from
Aristotle, Hist, Animal: lib, iv,, that, in this kind of animals
alone, the voice of the feraale is deeper than that of the
male ; therefore the lowing of the heifer, rather than of the
bullock, is chosen by the Prophet as the properer iraage
to express the raourning of Moab, But I raust add, that
the expression here is very short and obscure, and the opi
nions of interpreters are various in regard to the meaning.
Compare Jer, xlviii, .34,
Ibid, — they shall ascend] For nbyi, LXX and a MS
read in the plural ibyi. And from this passage the paral-
Id place in Jer, xlviii. 5, must be corrected; where, for nbyi
laa, which gives no good sense, read ia nbpi,
7, — shall perish] nax, or max. This word seeras to
have been lost out of the text : it is .supplied by the parallel
place, Jer, xlviu, 36, Syr, expresses it by lap, praeteriit;
and Chald, by ptrani, diripientur.
Ibid, to the valley of willows.] That is, to Babylon.

Chap. XV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 229
Hieron, and Jarchi in loc, both referring to Psal, cxxxvu, 2;
So likewise Prideaux, Le Clerc, &c,
9, Upon the escaped of Moab and Ariel, and the remnant
of Admah.] The LXX for niix read bxiix, Ar Moab
was called also Ariel or Areopolis ; Hieron, and Theodoret,
See Cellarius, They make nmx also a proper name,
MichaeUs thinks, that the Moabites raight be called the
reranant of Adraah, as sprung from Lot and his daughters
escaped from the destruction of that and the other cities ; or
metaphoricaUy, as the Jews are called the princes of Sodom
and people of Goraorrah, chap, i, 10, BibUothek Orient,
Part, V. p. 195. The reading of this verse is very doubtful ;
and the sense, in every way in which it can be read, very
obscure,
CHAPTER XVI.
1. I will send forth the son — ] Both the reading and
raeaning of this verse are still more doubtful than those of
the preceding. The LXX and Syr, read nbi2?X, in the
first person sing, future tense : the Vulg. and Talmud Ba
bylon, read nbii?, sing, imperative. The Syr. for ia reads
ia, which is confirmed by one MS, and perhaps by a se
cond. The two first verses describe the distress of Moab
on the Assyrian invasion ; in which even the son of the prince
of the country is represented as forced to flee for his Ufe
through the desert, that he may escape to Judea; and the
young woraen are driven forth, like young birds cast out of -
the nest, and endeavouring to wade through the fords of the
river Arnon.
3. Impart counsel — ] The Vulg. renders the verbs in
the beginning of this verse in the singular nuraber. So the
Keri ; and so likewise raany MSS have it, and sorae. editions,
and Syr. The verbs throughout the verse are also in the
feminine gender ; agreeing with Sion, which I suppose to be
understood. 4, — the outcasts of Moab — ] Setting the points aside, this
is by much the raost obvious construction of the Hebrew,
as well as raost agreeable to the context, and the design of
the Prophet, And it is confirraed by the LXX, o'i ((ivyx^n
MaxZ, et Syr,
Ibid, — the oppressor — ] Perhaps the Israelites; who
in the time of Ahaz invaded Judah, defeated his army, slay-
T

230 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XVI.
ing 120,000 men ; and brought the kingdom to the brink
of destruction, Judah, being now in a more prosperous
condition, is represented as able to receive and to protect
the fugitive Moabites, And with those former times of dis
tress, the security and flourishing state of the kingdom un
der the government of Hezekiah is contrasted.
6. We have heard the pride of Moab — ] For xa, read
nxi ; two MSS, (one ancient), and Jer. xlviii. 29. Ze-
phaniah, in his prophecy against Moab, the subject of which
is the same with that of Jeremiah in his xlriiith chapter, (see
above Note on xv. I.), enlarges much on the pride of Moab,
and their insolent behaviour towards the Jews : —
" I have heard the reproach of Moab ;
And the revilings of the sons of Amraon :
Who have reproached my people ;
And have magnified themselves against their borders.
Therefore, as I live, saith Jehovah God of Hosts, the God
of Israel,
Surely Moab shall be as Sodom,
And the sons of Ammon as Gomorrah :
A possession of nettles, and pits of salt,
And a desolation for ever.
The residue of my people shall spoil them.
And the remnant of my nation shall dispossess them :
This shall they have for their pride ;
Because they have raised a reproach, and have magnified
themselves,
Against the people of Jehovah God of Hosts," Zeph, ii, 8—10,
7. For the men of Kirhares — ] A palpable mistake in
this place is happily corrected by the parallel text of Jer,
xlviii, 31, where, instead of iii?ii2?X, foundations, or flagons,
we read il2?ix, men. In the same place of Jeremiah, and in
ver, 36,, and here in ver, IL, the name of the city is Kir
hares, not Kirharesheth,
Ibid, — are put to shame] Here the text of Jeremiah
leaves us much at a loss, in a place that seems to be greatly
corrupted. The LXX join the two last words of this verse
with the beginning of the following. Their rendering is ;
XXI yx iyr^xTTviirti rx -zai^ix Eo-sSwv, For Tx they must have read
bx ; otherwise, how carae they by the negative, which seems
not to belong to this place ? Neither is it easy to raake sense
of the rest without a small alteration, bj' reading, instead of
iyr^x-nrmvi rx, lyr^xvnnrxi. In a word, the Arabic version taken

Chap. XVI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 231
from the LXX, plainly authorizes this reading of the LXX,
and without the negative ; and it is fuUy confirraed by MSS
Pachora, and i, D, ii, which have both of thera tyr^x-Trtiinrxt
-m^ix Eo-iQm, without the negative ; which makes an excellent
sense, and, I think, gives us the true reading of the Hebrew
text: pawn ninni? iiabaa ^x. They frequently render the
verb Dbaa by iyr^eirofixi. And inba: answers perfectly weU
to bbnx, the paraUel word in the next Une, The MSS
vary in expressing the wprd Dixai, which gives no tolerable
sense in this place: one reads Dixaia, two others Dixaa, in
another the a is upon a rasure of two letters; and Vulg;
instead of it reads Dili an, plagas suas.
8, Her branches extended themselves — ] For iu?a3 a
MS has Ill?a2 ; which raay perhaps be right : Corapare Jer.
xlviii, 32, which has in this part of the sentence the synony
mous word lyji.
The meaning of this verse is, that the wines of Sibmah
and Heshbon were greatly celebrated, and in high repute
with all the great men and princes of that and the neigh
bouring countries ; who indulged themselves even to intem
perance in the use of them. So that their vines were so
much in request, as not only to be propagated all over the
country of Moab, to the sea of Sodom ; but to have cions
of them sent even beyond the sea into foreign countries.
173b n, knocked down, demolished; that is, overpowered,
intoxicated. The drunkards of Ephraim are called by the
Prophet, chap, xxvin, 1, pi imbn. See Schultens on Prov,
xxiii, 25, Gratius, speaking of the Mareotic wine, says of it,
" Pharios quae fregit noxia reges," Cyneg, ver, 312,
9, as with the weeping — ] For laaa a MS reads laa.
In Jer, xlviu, 32, it is laan, LXX read'iaaa, which I fol
low. Ibid, And upon thy vintage the destroyer hath fallen]
bsa nm lii^tp bri. In these few words there are two
great raistakes ; which the text of Jer, xlviii, 32, rectifies :
for niisp, it has "jiiJia ; and for nin, nu? : both which
corrections the Chaldee in this place confirms. As to the
first, " Hesebon and Eleale, and
The flowery dale of Sibmah clad with vines,"
were never celebrated for their harvests ; it was the vintage
that suffered by the irruption of the enemy ; and so read

232 NOTES ON ISAIAH. CHap. XVI.
LXX and Syr, nin is the noisy acclamation of the
treaders of the grapes : and see what sense this makes in the
literal rendering of the Vulgate — super messem tuam " vox
calcantium iiruit," The reading in Jer, xlviii, 32, is cer
tainly right, bsa nu?, vastator irruit. The shout of the
treaders does not come in till the next verse ; in which the
text of Isaiah in its turn raends that of Jeremiah, xlviii, 33,
where instead of the first nm, the shout, we ought un
doubtedly to read, as here, ^nn, the treader.
10, An end is put to the shouting] The LXX read
naii?n, passive, and in the third person — rightly; for God
is not the speaker in this place. The rendering of LXX
is ^iTTxuTxt yx^ xsMvo-fix ; which last word, necessary to the
rendering of the Hebrew, and to the sense, is supplied by
MSS Pachom, and i, D, ii,, baring been lost out of the
other copies,
12, when Moab shall see — ] For nxia a MS reads
nxi, and so Syr, and Chald, " Perhaps nxia ia is only
a various reading of nxba ia :" Secker, A very probable
conjecture, 14, — and without strength] An ancient MSj with
LXX, reads xbi.

CHAPTER XVII,
This prophecy by its tide should relate only to Damas
cus ; but it fuU as much concerns, and more largely treats
of, the kingdom of Samaria and the Israelites, confederated
with Damascus and the Syrians again.st the kingdom of
Judah, It was delivered probably soon after the prophecies
of the viith and riiith chapters, in the beginning of the reign
of Ahaz ; and was fulfilled by Tiglath PUeser's taking Da
mascus, and carrying the people captives to Kir, (2 Kings
xvi, 9,) ; and overrunning great part of the kingdom of
Israel, and carrying a great number of the Israelites also
captives to Assyria ; and still more fully in regard to Israel,
by the conquest of the kingdom, and the captivity of the
people, effected a few years after by Shalmaneser,
1, —a ruinous heap] For irn the LXX read irb, Vulg,
lya. I follow the forraer,
2, The cities are deserted for ever] What has Aroer on
the river Arnon to do with Daraascus? and if there be

Chap. XVII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 233
another Aroer on the northern border of the tribe of Gad,
(as Reland seems to think there might be), this is not much
more to the purpose. Besides, the cities of Aroer, if Aroer
itself is a city, makes no good sense. The LXX, for lyir,
Aroer, read 13? ill?, us roy ximx, for ever, or for a long dura
tion. The Chald, takes the word for a.yerb frora nir, trans
lating it lain, devastabuntur. The Syr, read ii;i?nr. So
that the reading is very doubtful, I follow the LXX, as
making the plainest sense,
3,' — the pride of Syria — ] For ixii? Houbigant reads
nxil?, the pride, answering, as the sentence seems evidently
to require, to liaa, the glory of Israel, The conjecture is
so very probable, that I venture to follow it,
5, — as when one gathereth — ] That is, the king of As-
s)T-ia shall sweep away the whole body of the people, as the
reaper strippeth off the whole crop of corn; and the rem
nant shall be no raore, in proportion, than the scattered ears
Jeft to the gleaner. The valley of Rephaira near Jerusalem
was celebrated for its plentiful harvests ; it is here used poe
tically for any fruitful country,
8, — the altars dedicated to the work of his hands] The
construction of the words, and the meaning of the sentence,
in this place, are not obvious : all the ancient versions, and
raost of the modern, have mistaken it. The word nu?j?)3
stands in regimine with ninain, not in apposition with it:
it means the altars of the work of their hands ; that is, of
the idols; not which are the work of -their hands. Thus
Kimchi has explained it, and Le Clerc has followed hira,
9, — the Hivites and the Amorites — ] iinxni u?iinn.
No one has ever yet been able to make any tolerable sense
of these words. The translation of the LXX has happily
preserved what seems to be the true reading of the text, as
it stood in the copies of their time ; though the words are
now transposed, either in the text, or in their version : oi
Afioffxioi XXI o< Euawi. It is remarkable, that many commen
tators, who never thought of admitting the reading of the
LXX, yet understand the passage as referring to that very
event which, their version expresses : so that it is plain, that
nothing can be more suitable to the context. My Father
saw the necessity of adraitting this variation, at a time when
it was not usual to make so free with the Hebrew text. See
Lowth on the place,
] 0. — shoots from a foreign soil] The pleasant plants,

¦234 NOTES ON ISAIAH. . Chap. XVII.
and shoots from a foreign soil, are allegorical expressions
for strange and idolatrous worship ; vicious and abominable
practices connected with it ; reUance on hmnan aid, and on
aUiances entered into with the neighbouring nations, espe
cially Egypt: to all which the IsraeUtes were gready ad
dicted; and in their expectations from which they should
be grievously disappointed,
12 — 14, Wo to the multitude — ] The three last verses
of this chapter seem to have no relation to the foregoing
prophecy, to which they are joined. It is a beautiful piece,
standing singly and by itself; for neither has it any con
nexion with what foUows : whether it stands in its right
place, or not, I cannot say. It is a noble description of the
formidable invasion, and of the sudden overthrow, of Sena
cherib ; which is intimated in the strongest terms,~ and the
most expressive images, exactly suitable to the event.
12,13. Like the roaring of mighty waters — ] Five words,
three at the end of the 12th verse, and two at the beginning
of the 13th, are omitted in five MSS; that is, in effect, the
repetition, contained in the first line of verse 13. in this
translation, is not madei After haring observed, that it is
equaUy easy to account for the omission of these words by a
transcriber, if they are genuine ; or their insertion, if they
are not genuine ; occasioned by his carrying his eye back
wards to the word Dinxb, or forwards to pxi2?i ; I shaU leave
it to the reader's judgment to determine, whether they are
genuine, or not.
14. — and he is no more] For laaix, ten MSS (three
ancient) and two editions, and LXX, Syr. Chald. Vulg.
have iaaix.i. This particle, authenticated by so many good
vouchers, restores the sentence to the true poetical form,
implying a repetition of some part of the parallel fine pre
ceding, thus:
" At the season of evening, behold terror !
Before the morning, and [behold] he is no more !"
See Prelim. Dissert, p. xii. note.
CHAPTER XVIIL
This is one of the most obscure prophecies in the whole
book of Isaiah. The subject of it, the end and design of it,
the people to whom it is addressed, the history to which it
belongs, the person who sends the messengers, and the na-

Chap. XVIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 333
tion to whom the messengers are sent ; are all obscure and
doubtfiil. 1. The winged cymbal] Disaa babs. I adopt this as the
most probable of the many interpretations that have been
given of these words. It is Bochart's : see Phaleg iv. 2.
The Egyptian Sistrum is expressed by a periphrasis; the
Hebrews had no name for it in their language, not having
in use the instrument itself. The cymbal they had; an
instrument in its use and sound not much unlike to the sis
trum ; and to distinguish from it the sistrum, they called it
the cymbal with wings. The cymbal was a round hollow
piece of metal, which being struck against another, gave a
ringing sound : the sistrum was a round instruraent, consist
ing of a broad rim of metal, through which from side to side
ran several loose laminae, or sraall rods, of raetal, which
being shaken, gave a like sound : These projecting on each
side, had somewhat of the appearance of wings ; or might be
very properly expressed by the sarae word which the He
brews used for wings, or for the extreraity, or a part of any
thing projecting. The sistrura is given in a medal of Ad
rian, as the proper attribute of Egypt. See Addison on
Medals, Series iii. No. 4. where the figureof it may be seen.
In opposition to other interpretations of these words
which have prevailed, it may be briefly observed, that bsba
is never used to signify shadow, nor ^laa applied to the saUs
of ships.
If therefore the words are rightly interpreted the winged
cymbal, meaning the sistrum, Egypt must be the country,
to which the prophecy is addressed : And upon this hy
pothesis the version and explanation must proceed. I fur
ther suppose, that the prophecy was delivered before Se
nacherib's return from his Egyptian expedition, which took
up three years ; and that it was designed to give to the Jews,
and perhaps likewise to the Egyptians, an intimation of
God's counsels in regard to the destruction of their great
and powerful enemy.
Ibid. Which borders on ihe rivers of Cush] V^at are
the rivers of Cush, whether the eastern branches of the
fower Nile, the boundary of Egypt towards Arabia, or the
parts of the upper Nile towards Ethiopia, it is not easy to
determine. 'The word lario signifies either on this side or
on the further side .- I have made use of the same kind of
ambiguous expression in the translation.

236 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XVIII.
2. — in vessels of papyrus] This circumstance agrees per
fectly well with Egypt. It is well known, that the Egyp
tians commonly used on the Nile a light sort of ships, or
boats, made of the reed papyrus. " Ex ipso quidem papyro
navigia texunt :" Plin. xiii. 1 1 .
" Conseritur bibula Memphitis cymba papyro." Luc. iv. 136,
Ibid, Go, ye swift messengers — ] To this nation before
mentioned, who, by the Nile, and by their numerous ca
nals, have the means of spreading the report, in the mpst ex
peditious manner, through the whole country ; go, ye swift
messengers, and carry this notice of God's designs in regard
to them, By the swift messengers are meant, not any
particular persons speciaUy appointed to this office, but any
the usual conveyers of news whatsoever, traveUers, mer
chants, and the like, the instruments and agents of common
fame : these are ordered to publish this declaration made by
the Prophet throughout Egypt, and to all the world ; and
to excite their attention to the promised visible interposi^
tion of God.
Ibid. — stretched out in length — ] Egypt, that is, the
fruitful part of it, exclusive of the deserts on each side, is
one long vale, through the middle of which runs the Nile,
bounded on each side to the east and west by a chain of
mountains ; seven hundred and fifty miles in length ; in
breadth, from one to two or three days' journey : even at
the widest part of the Delta, from Pelusium to Alexandria,
not above two hundred and fifty miles broad. Egmont and
Heyman, and Pococke's Travels.
Ibid. — smoothed — ] Either relating to the practice of
the Egjrptian priests, who made their bodies smooth by
shaving off their hair ; see Herod, ii. 37. ; or rather to the
country's being made smooth, perfecdy plain and level, by
the overflowing of the Nile,
Ibid. — meted out by line — ] It is generally referred to
the frequent necessity of having recourse to mensuration in
Egypt, in order to determine the boundaries after the inun
dations of the Nile ; to which even the origin of the science
pf geometry is by some ascribed. Strabo, lib. xrii, sub init.
Ibid. — trodden down — ] Supposed to allude to a pecu
liar method of tillage in use among the Egyptians. Both
Herodotus (lib. ii.) and Diodorus (lib, i,) say, that when the
Nile had retired within its banks, and the ground became
isoraewhat dry, they sowed their land, and then sent in their

Chap. XVIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 237
catde (their hogs, says the former) to tread in the seed ;
and without any further care expected the harvest.
Ibid, — the rivers have nourished] The word ix»a is
generally taken to be an irregular form for ina, have spoiled,
as an ancient MS has it in this place ; and so most of the
versions, both ancient and raodern, understand it. On
which Schultens, Gram, Heb, p, 491, has the following
remark : " Ne minimam quidem speciem veri habet ixra,
Esai, xviii. 2, elatum pro ina, diripiunt. Haec esset anoroa-
lia, cui nihil simile in toto linguae ambitu. In talibus nil
finire, vel fateri ex mera agi conjectura, tutius justiusque,
Radicem xta olim extare potuisse, quis neget? Si cogna-
tum quid sectandum erat, ad nra, contemsit, potius decur-
rendura fuisset: ut ixta pro ifa sit enuntiatura, vel ina.
Digna phrasis, flumina contemnunt terram, i. e. -inundant."
" xta, Arab, extulit se superbius, item subjecit sibi : unde
praet, pi. ixta subjecerunt sibi, i. e. inundarunt :" Siraonis
Lexic. Heb,
A learned friend has suggested to rae another explanation
of the word, xta, Syr, and xria, Chald, signifies uber,
mamma; agreeably to which the verb might signify to nou
rish. This would perfectly well suit with the Nile : whereas
nothing can be raore discordant than the idea of spoiling and
plundering ; for to the inundation of the Nile Egypt owed
every thing. — the fertility of the soU, and the very soil itself.
Besides, the overflowing of the NUe carae on by gentle de
grees, covering without laying waste the country, " Mira
aequo natura fluminis, quod cum caeteri omnes abluant ter
ras et eviscerent, NUus tanto caeteris major adeo nihU exe-
dit, nee abradit, ut contra adjiciat vires ; miniraumque in eo
sit, quod solum temperet, lUato enim lirao arenas saturat
ac jungit : debetque iUi ^gyptus non tantum fertilitatem
terrarum, sed ipsas :" Seneca, Nat, Quajst, iv, 2, I take
the liberty, therefore, which Schultens seems to think aUow-
able in this place, of hazarding a conjectural interpretation,
3, When the standard is lifted up — ] I take God to be
the agent in this verse ; and that by the standard and the
trumpet are meant the meteors, the thunder, the lightning,
the storm, earthquake, and tempest, by which Senacherib's
army shaU be destroyed, or by which at least the destruc
tion of it shall be accompanied ; as it is described in chap,
xxix, 6. and xxx, 30, 31, and x, 16, 17, See also Psal,
lxxvi. and the tide of it according to LXX, Vulg. and

238 NOTES ON ISAIAH, Chap, XVIII,
JEthiop, They are called by a bold metaphor, the standard
lifted up, arid the trumpet sounded. The latter is used by
Homer, I think, with great force, in his introduction to the
battle of the gods ; though I find it has disgusted some of
the minor critics :
Bp«^! 3' swgsiss y,iuy,
Aj«<p< Se <rxX'!tiy\iy fiiyag y^xvog. II. XXl. 388.
" Heaven in loud thunders bids the trumpet sound.
And wide beneath them groans the rending ground." Pope.
4. For thus hath Jehovah said unto me — ] The subject
of the remaining part of the chapter is, that God would
comfort and support his own people, though threatened
with immediate destruction by the Assyrians; that Senache
rib's great designs and mighty efforts against them should
be frustrated, and that his vast expectations should be ren
dered abortive, when he thought them mature, and just
ready to be crowned with success ; that the chief part of his
army should be made a prey for the beasts of the field, and
the fowls of the air, (for this is the meaning of the aUegory
continued through the 5th and 6th verses) ; and that Egypt,
being delivered from his oppression, and avenged by the
hand of God of the wrongs which she had suffered, should
return thanks for the wonderful deUverance, both of herself
and of the Jews, from this most powerful adversary.
Ibid. Like the clear heat — ] The same images are em
ployed by an Arabian poet : —
" Solis more fervens, dura frigus ; quumque ardet
Sirius, tum vero frigus ipse et umbra."
Which is illustrated in the note by a like passage from
another Arabian poet : —
" Calor est hyeme, refrigerium sestate."
Excerpta ex Hamasa ; published by Schultens, at the end
of Erpenius's Arabic Graramar, p. 425.
Ibid. — after rain — ] " 11X hie significat pluviara ; juxta
illud, sparget nubes pluviam suam. Job xxxvii. 11." Kimchi.
In which place of Job the Chaldee paraphrast does indeed
explain iiix by nnan ; and so again ver. 21.; and chap.
xxxvi. 30. This meaning of the word seeras to make the
best sense in this place; it is to be wished, that it were bet
ter supported.
Ibid. — in the day of harvest.] For Dna, in the heat,

Chap. XVIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 239
five MSS, (three ancient), LXX, Syr. and Vulg. read Dva,
in the day. The mistake seems to have risen from Dna~ in
the line above.
5. — the blossom — ] Heb. her blossom; nsa : that is,
the blossom of the rine, isa, understood, which is of the
common gender. See Gen. xl. 10. Note, that, by die de
fective punctuation of this word, many interpreters, and our
translators among the rest, have been led into a grievous
mistake, (for how can the .swelling grape become a blossom ?)
taking the word nJta for the predicate; whereas it is the
subject of the proposition, or the nominative case to the verb.
7. — a gift — ] The Egyptians were in alhance with the
kingdora of Judah, and were fellow-sufferers with the Jews
under the invasion of their comraon eneray Senacherib ; and
so were very nearly interested in the great and rairaculous de
liverance of that kingdora by the destruction of the Assyrian
army. Upon which wonderful event, it is said, 2 Chron.
xxxii. 23. that " many brought gifts unto Jehovah to Jeru
salem, and presents to Hezekiah king of Judah ; so that he
was magnified of all nations from thenceforth." It is not to
be doubted, that among these the Egyptians distinguished
themselves in their acknowledgments on this occasion.
Ibid, —-from a people — ] The LXX and Vulg. read
Dlfn ; which is confirmed by the repetition of it in the next
line. The- difference is of importance; for, if this be the
true reading, the prediction of the admission of Egypt into
the true church of God is not so explicit as it might other
wise seem to be. However, that event is clearly foretold at
the end of the next chapter.

CHAPTER XIX.
Not many years after the destruction of Senacherib's
army before Jerusalem, by which the Egyptians were freed
from the yoke with which they were threatened by so
powerful an enemy, who had carried on a successful war of
three years' continuance against them ; the affairs of Egypt
were again throvwi into confusion by intestine broUs among
theraselves ; which ended in a perfect anarchy, that lasted
some few years. This was followed by an aristocracy, or
rather tyranny, of twelve princes, who divided the country
between them ; and at last by the sole dominion of Psarami-

240 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XIX.
tichus, which he held for fifty-four years. Not long after
that, foUowed the invasion and conquest of Egypt by Nebu
chadnezzar ; and then by the Persians under Cambyses, the
son of Cyrus. The yoke of the Persians was so grievous,
that the conquest of the Persians by Alexander may well
be considered as a deliverance to Egypt ; especially as he
and his successors greatly favoured the people, and improved
the country. To all these events the Prophet seems to have
had a view in this chapter ; and in particular, from ver. 18.
the prophecy of the propagation of the true religion in Egypt
seems to point to the flourishing state of Judaisrn in that
country, in consequence of the great favour shewn to the
Jews by the Ptolemies. Alexander himself settled a great
many Jews in his new city Alexandria, granting them pri
vileges equal to those of the Macedonians. The first
Ptoleray, called Soter, carried great numbers of them thither,
and gave them such encouragement, that stiU more of them
were coUected there from different parts; so that Philo
reckons, that in his time there were a million of Jews in
that country. These worshipped the God of their fathers ;
and their example and influence must have had a great effect
in spreading the knowledge and worship of the true God
through the whole country. See Bishop Newton on the
Prophecies, Dissert, xu.
4. — cruel lords] Nebuchadnezzar in the first place, and
afterwards the whole succession of Persian kings, who in
general were hard masters, and grievously oppressed the
country. Note, that for nii?p, a MS reads Dili?p, agreeable
to which is the rendering of LXX, Syr. and Vulg.
6. — shall become putrid] iniatxn. This sense of the
word, which Simonis gives in his Lexicon frora the meaning
of it in the Arabic, suits the place much better than any
other interpretation hitherto given. And that the word in
Hebrew had some such signification is probable from 2
Chron, xxix. 19, where the Vulgate renders it by polluff,
and the Targum by profanavit and abominabile fecit, which
the context in that place seeras plainly to reqiure. The
form of the verb here is very irregular ; and the rabbins and
gramraarians seem to give no pirobable account of it,
8, And the fishers — ] .-There was great plenty of fish in
Egypt : see Numb, xi, 5, " The Nile," says Diodorus, lib,
1. " abounds with incredible numbers of all sorts of fish."
And much raore the lakes ; Egmont, Pococke, &c.

Chap. XIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 241
10, — her stores — ] nin mi?, <»5ro<)iK«(, Aquila,
Ibid, all that make a gain of pools for fish] This ob
scure line is rendered by different interpreters in very differ
ent manners, Kimchi explains iftax, as if it were the sarae
with inay, from Job xxx, 25, In which he is foUowed by
some of the rabbins, and supported by LXX : and iau?,
which I translate gain, and which some take for nets, or in-
closures, the LXX render by ^uSov, strong drink, or beer,
which it is well known was much used in Egypt : and so
likewise the Syriac, retaining the Hebrew word Xiau?. I
submit these very different interpretations to the reader's
judgment. The version of the LXX is as follows : — xxi
wxyrii 01 Troiyyrii roy ^vhy XuTrtiho-oyrxi, xxi rx; ^v^x; -rroyio-yo^t ; " And
all they that make barley-wine shall mourn, and be grieved
in soul,"
11, — have counselled a brutish counsel] The sentence,
as it now stands in the Hebrew, is imperfect; it wants the
verb. Archbishop Secker conjectures, that the words iisyv
nj?iB should be transposed; which would in sorae degree
reraove the difficulty. But it is to be observed, that the
translator of the Vulgate seeras to have found in his copy
the verb isri added after nyis : " Sapientes consiUarii
Pharaonis dederunt consilium insipiens," This is probably
the true reading ; it is perfectly agreeable to the Hebrew
idiom, raakes the construction of the sentence clear, and
renders the transposition of the above words unnecessary,
12, — let them come — ] Here too a word seeras to have
been left out of the text. After iinan, two MSS (one
ancient) add ixas let them come. Which, if we consider
the forra and the construction of the sentence, has very much
the appearance of being genuine ; otherwise the connective
conjunction, at the beginning of the next member, is not
only superfluous but embarrassing. See also the version of
LXX, in which the same deficiency is manifest.
Ibid, — and let them declare — ] " For I2?ii, let them
know, perhaps we ought to read lyiiv, let them make known .-"
Secker. The LXX and Vulg, favour this reading :
iiTrxroxrxy, indicent.
13, They have .caused — ] The text has I3?nni, ajid they
have caused to err. Fifty MSS, thirteen editions, Vulg,
and Chald, omit the i.
Ibid, ¦ — pillars — ] nas, to be pointedjas plural without
doubt. So Grotius, and so Chald.

24,2 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XIX.
14. — in the midst of them — ] " Daipa, LXX, quod
forte rectius :" Secker, So likewise Chald,
16, — the Egyptians shall be — ] vni, plural, MS Bodl,
LXX, and Chald, This is not proposed as an eraendation,
for either form is proper.
17. And the land of Judah — ] The threatenuig hand of
God will be held out and shaken over Egypt, frora the side
of Judea ; through which the Assyrians will march to invade
it. Five MSS and two editions have nanb.
18. — the City of the Sun] Dinn iir. This passage is
attended with much difficulty and obscurity. First, in re
gard to the true reading. It is well known, that Onias
applied it to his own views, either to procure frora the king
of Egypt permission to build his temple in the Hieropolitan
Nome, or to gain credit and authority to it when buUt ; from
the notion which he industriously propagated, that Isaiah
had in this place prophesied of the buUding of such a temple.
He pretended, that the very place where it should be bmlt
was expressly named by the Prophet Dinn iiy, the city of
the sun. This possibly may have been the original reading.
The present text has Dinn iiy, the city of destruction:
which some suppose to have been introduced into the text
by the Jews of Palestine afterwards; to express their de
testation of the place, being rauch offended with this schis-^
matical temple in Egypt. Some think the latter to have
been the true reading, and that the Prophet himself gave
this turn to the narae out of conterapt, and to intiraate the
deraolition of this Hieropolitan teraple ; which in effect was
destroyed by Vespasian's orders after that of Jerusalem.
" Videtur Propheta consulto scripsisse Din pro Din, ut
alibi scribitur px nia pro bx nia, mi?a ii?ix pro bra ii?ix,
&c. Vide Lowth in loc. :" Secker. But on supposition
that Dinn iir is the true reading, others understand it
differently. The word Din in Arabic signifies a lion : and
Conrad Ikenius has written a dissertation (Dissert. Philol.
Theol. xvi.) to prove that the place here mentioned is not
Heliopolis, as it is comraonly supposed to be, but Leonto-
polis in the Heliopolitan Nome ; as it is indeed called in the
letter, whether real or pretended, of Onias to Ptolemy,
which Josephus has inserted in his Jewish Antiquities, lib,
xiii, cap, 3, And I find, that several persons of great learn
ing and judgment think that Ikenius has proved the point be
yond contradiction. See Christian. Muller, Satura Observ.

Chap. XIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 243
PhUolog. Michaelis BibUothek Oriental, Part V. p. 171.
But after all I believe, that neither Onias, nor Heliopolis,
nor Leontopolis, has any thing to do with this subject. The
application of this place of Isaiah to Onias's purpose seems
to have been a mere invention ; and, in consequence of it,
there may perhaps have been some unfair manageraent to
accommodate the text to that purpose; which has been carried
even further than the Hebrew text ; for the Greek version
' has here been either translated from a corrupted text, or wil
fully mistranslated or corrupted, to serve the same cause. The
place is there called aroAis Ao-iSix, the city of righteousness : a
narae apparently contrived by Onias's party to give credit
to their temple, which was to rival that of Jerusalem. Upon
the whole, the true reading of the Hebrew text in this
place is very uncertain ; nine MSS and seven editions have
Din, so likewise Syra. Vulg. Arab. LXX, Compl. On the
other hand, AquUa, ' 'Theodot. and Syr. read Diri; the
Chaldee paraphrase takes in both readings.
The reading of the text being so uncertain, no one can
pretend to determine what the city was that is here men
tioned by name; rauch less to deterraine, what the four
other cities were which the Prophet does not name. I take
the whole passage, from the 18th verse to the end of the
chapter, to contain a general intimation of the future pro
pagation of the knowledge of the true God in Egypt and
Syria, under the successors of Alexander ; and, in conse
quence of this propagation, of the early reception of the
gospel in the same countries, when it should be published
to the world. See further on this subject, Prideaux's Con
nect, an. 149. ; Dr Owen's Inquiry into the Present State
of the LXX Version, p, 41., and Bryant's Observations on
Ancient History, p. 124.

CHAPTER XX.
Tharthan besieged Ashdod or Azotus, which probably
belonged at this time to Hezekiah's dominions : see 2 Kings
xviu. 8. The people expected to be relieved by the Cush-
ites of Arabia, and by the Egyptians. Isaiah was ordered
to go uncovered, that is, without his upper garment, the
rough mande comraonly worn by the Prophets, (see Zech.
xiii. 4.), probably three days, to shew that within three years

244 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XX.
the town should be taken, after the defeat of the Cushites
and Egyptians by the king of Assyria, which event should
make their case desperate, and induce thera to surrender.
Azotus was a strong place : it afterwards held out twenty-nine
years against Psaramitichus, king of Egypt, Herod, ii. 157.
Tharthan was one of Senacherib's generals, 2 Kings xviii. 17.,
and Tirhakah king of the Cushites was in alliance with the
king of Egypt against Senacherib. These circumstances
make it probable, that by Sargon is meant Senacherib. It
might be one of the seven names by which Jerom, on this
place, says he was caUed. He is called Sacherdonus and Sa-
cherdan in the book of Tobit. The taking of Azotus must
have happened before Senacherib's attempt on Jerusalem;
when he boasted of his late conquests, chap, xxxvii. 25. And
the warning of the Prophet had a principal respect to the
Jews also, who were too much inclined to depend upon the
assistance of Egypt. As to the rest, history and chronology
affording us no light, it may be impossible to clear either
this, or any other hypothesis, (which takes Sargon to be
Shalmaneser, or Asarhaddon, &c.), from all difficulties.
It is not probable that the Prophet walked uncovered
and barefoot for three years : his appearing in that manner
was a sign, that within three years the Egyptians and Cush
ites should be in the same condition, being conquered and
made captives by the king of Assyria. The time was de
noted, as well as the event ; but his appearing in that man
ner •for three whole years, could give no premonition of the
time at all. It is probable, therefore, that the Prophet was
ordered to walk so for three days, to denote the accom
plishment of the event in three years ; a day for a year, ac
cording to the prophetical rule : Numb. xiv. 34. Ezek. iv. 6.
The words Dini ii?bii?, three days, may possibly have been
lost out of the text, at the end of the second verse, after
r|ni, barefoot; or after the same word in the third verse :
where, in the Alexandrine and Vatican copies of LXX,
and in MSS Pachom. and i. D. ii. the words tj** vn are
twice expressed. Perhaps, instead of DiQi U?biy, the Greek
translator might read Diau? ii?bii?, by his own mistake, or by
that of his copy, after «ini in the third verse, for which
stands the first Tgi« et» in the Alexandrine aijd Vatican
LXX, and in the two MSS above-mentioned.

Chap. XXI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 245

CHAPTER XXI.
The ten first verses of this chapter contain a prediction
of the taking of Babylon by the Medes and Persians. It is
a passage singular in its kind, for its brevity and force ; for
the variety and rapidity of the raovements; and for the
strength and energy of colouring with which the action and
event is painted. It opens -with the Prophet's seeing- at a
distance the dreadful storra that is gathering, and ready to
burst upon Babylon: The event is intimated in general
terras; and God's orders are issued to the Persians and
Medes to set forth upon the expedition which he has given
thera in charge. Upon this the Prophet enters into the raidst
of the action ; and, in the person of Babylon, expresses in
the strongest terms the astonishment and horror that seizes
her on the sudden surprise of the city, at the very season
dedicated to pleasure and festivity, ver. 3, 4. : then in his
own person describes the situation of things there; the se
curity of the Babylonians, and in the midst of their feasting
the sudden alarm of war, ver. 5. The event is then declared
in a very singular raanner. God orders the Prophet to set
a watchraan to look out, and to report what he sees : he sees
two companies marching onward, representing by their ap
pearance the two nations that were to execute God's orders,
who declare, that Babylon is fallen, ver. 6 — 9.
But what is this to the Prophet, and to the Jews, the ob
ject of his ministry ? The application, the end, and design
of the prophecy, is admirably given in a short expressive ad
dress to the Jews, partly in the person of God, partly in that
of the Prophet : " O my threshing !" — " O ray people,
whpra for your punishraent I shall raake subject to the Ba
bylonians, to try and to prove you, and to separate the chaff
frora the corn, the bad from the good among you ; hear this
for your consolation : Your punishraent, your slavery and
oppression, wiU have an end in the destruction of your op
pressors." 1. — the desert of the sea] This plainly raeans Babylon,
which is the subject of the prophecy. The country about
Babylon, and especially below it towards the sea, was a great
flat raorass, often overflowed by the Euphrates and Tigris,
It became habitable by being drained by the raany canals
that were raade in it, u

246 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXI.
Herodotus, i, 184, says, that " Semiramis confined the
Euphrates within its channel, by raising great dams against
it ; for before it overflowed the whole country like a sea,"
And Abydenus, (quoting Megasthenes, apud Euseb, Praep.
Evang. ix. 41.), speaking of the buUding of Babylon by
Nebuchadonosor, "It is reported, that all this part was
covered with water, and was called the sea ; and that Belus
drew off the waters, conveying them into proper receptacles,
and surrounded Babylon with a wall." When the Euphrates
was turned out of its channel by Cyrus, it was suffered still to
drowm the neighbouring country. The Persian government,
which did not favour the place, taking no care to remedy
this inconvenience, it became in time a great barren morassy
desert ; which event the title of the prophecy may perhaps
intimate. Such it was originally ; such it became after the
taking of the city by Cyrus ; and such it continues to this
day. Ibid. Like the southern tempests — ] The most vehement
storras, to which Judea was subject, carae from the great
¦desert country to the south of it. " Out of the south
cometh the whirlwind ;" Job xxxvii. 9. " And there came
a great -vrind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners
of the house ;" Ibid. i. 19. For the situation of Idumea, the
country, as I suppose, of Job, (see Lam. iv. 21. compared
with Jobi. L), was the same in this respect with that of
Judea. " And Jehovah shall appear over them.
And his arrow shall go forth as the lightning :
And the Lord Jehovah shall sound the trumpet ;
And shall march in the whirlwinds of the south." Zech. ix. 14.
2. The plunderer is plundered, and the destroyer is de
stroyed.] niTi? niwni laia laian. The MSS vary in
expressing or omitting the i in these four words. Ten MSS
are without the i in the second word, and eight MSS are
without the i in the fourth word ; which justifies Sym
machus, who has rendered them passively : « xdrm xkrurai,
XXI 0 rxXxma^i^m rx}\xiir»eii. He read HIU?, liaa. Cocceius
(Lexicon in voce) observes, that the Chaldee very often
renders the verb laa by rra, spoliavit ; and in this place,
and in xxxiu. 1. by the equivalent word Dax ; and in chap.
xxiv. 16. both by Dax and rra ; and Syr. in this place ren
ders it by Dba, opprcssit.
Ibid, — her vexations — ] Heb, her sighing ; that is, the

Chap. XXI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 247
sighing caused by her. So Kirachi on the place : " Innuit
iUos, qui gemebant ob timorem ejus; quia suffixa norainum'
referuntur ad agentem et ad patientera," " Oranes qui
geraebant a facie regis Babylonis, requiescere feci eos;"
Chald, And so likewise Ephraem Syr, in loc, edit, Asse
raani : " Geraitura ejus : dolor era scUicet et lachryraas,
quas Chaldsei reliquis per orbem gentibus ciere pergunt,"
5, The table is prepared — ] In Heb, the verbs are in
the infinitive mode absolute ; as in Ezek, i, 14, " And the
animals ran and returned, ani?i xisi, like the appearance
of lightning :" just as the Latins say currere et reverti, for
currebant et revertebantur. See chap, xxxii, 2, and the note
there, 7, And he saw a cha?'iot with two riders ,- a rider on an
ass, a rider on a camel.] This passage is extremely obscure,
from the arabiguity of the term aai, which is used three
times; and which signifies a chariot, or any other vehicle,
or the rider in it ; or a rider on a horse, or any other ani
mal; or a company of chariots or riders. The Prophet
may possibly mean a cavalry in two parts, with two sorts of
riders ; riders on asses or mules, and riders on caraels : or
led on by two riders, one on an ass, and one on a carael.
However, so far it is pretty clear, that Darius and Cyrus,
the Medes and the Persians, are intended to be distinguish
ed by the two riders, or the two sorts of cattle. It appears
frora Herodotus, i, 80, that the baggage of Cyrus's array was
carried on caraels. In his engageraent with Croesus, he took
off the baggage from the camels, and mounted his horsemen
upon them : the eneray's horses, offended with the sraell of
the camels, tumed back and fled,
8, he that looked out on the watch — ] The present read
ing niix, a lion, is so unintelligible, and the raistake so ob
vious, that I raake no doubt that the true reading is nxm,
as the Syriac translator raanifestly found it in his copy, who
renders it by xpn, speculator,
9, — a man, one of the two riders] So the Syriac un
derstands it; and Ephraera Syr,
10, O my threshing — ] " O thou, the object upon which
I shall exercise the severity of ray discipline ; that shalt lie
under ray afflicting hand, like corn spread upon the floor to
be threshed out and winnowed, to separate the chaff from
the wheat !" The iraage of threshing is frequently used by
the Hebrew poets with great elegance and force, to express

248 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXI.
the punishment of the wicked and the trial of the good, or
the utter dispersion and destruction of God's enemies. Of
the different ways of threshing in use among the Hebrews,
and the manner of performing them, see note on chap, xxviii,
27, Our translators have taken the liberty of using the word
threshing in a passive sense, to express the object or matter
that is threshed : in which I have followed them, not being
able to express it more properly, without departing too much
from the form and letter of the original. Sow of my floor,
Heb, It is an idiom of the Hebrew language to caU the
effect, the object, the adjunct, any thing tiiat belongs in al
most any way to another, the son of it, " O my threshing — "
The Prophet abruptly breaks off the speech of God, and,
instead of continuing it in the form in which he had begun,
and in the person of God, " This I declare unto you by my
Prophet ;" he changes the forra of address, and adds, in his
own person, " This I declare unto you from God,"
11, 12, The oracle concerning Dumah.] " Pro njan
Codex R, Meiri habet Diix ; et sic LXX, Vid, Kimchi ad
h, 1, ;" Biblia MichaeUs, Halse 1720, not, ad L
This prophecy, from the uncertainty of the occasion on
which it was uttered, and from the brevity of the expression,
is extremely obscure. The Edoraites as well as Jews were
subdued by the Babylonians. They inquire of the Prophet,
how long their subjection is to last ? he intimates, that the
Jews should be delivered from their captivity ; not so the
Edomites. Thus far the interpretation seems to carry with
it sorae degree of probability. What the meaning of the
last line may be, I cannot pretend to divine. In this diffi
culty the Hebrew MSS give no assistance. The MSS
of LXX, and the fragraents of the other Greek Versions,
give some variations, but no light. This being the case, I
thought it best to give an exact literal translation of the
whole two verses ; which may serve to enable the English
reader to judge in some measure of the foundation of the
various interpretations that have been given of thera.
13. The oracle concerning Arabia.] This title is of doubt
ful authority. In the first place, because it is not in many
of the MSS of the LXX; it is in MSS Pachora. and i. D.
II. only, as far as I can find with certainty : secondly, from
the singularity of the phraseology ; for xii?n is generally pre
fixed to its object without a preposition, as baa xii?n ; and

Chap. XXI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 249
never but in this place with the preposition a. Besides, as
the word air a occurs at the very beginning of the prophecy
itself, the first word but one, it is much to be suspected that
some one, taking it for a proper narae and the object of the
prophecy, nught note it as such by the words aira xii?J3
written in the raargin, from whence they raight easily get
into the text. The LXX did not take it for a proper
narae, but render it Iffs-s^*? ; and so Chald. whora I foUow :
for, otherwise, the forest in Arabia is so indeterminate and
vague a description, that in effect it means nothing at aU.
This observation raight have been of good use in clearing
up the foregoing very obscure prophecy, if any Ught had
arisen from joining the two together by removing the sepa
rating title ; but I see no connexion between thera.
This prophecy was to have been fulfilled within a year of
the tirae of its delivery, see ver. 16. ; and it was probably de
livered about the sarae time with the rest in this part of the
book, that is, soon befpre or after the 14th of Hezekiah, the
year<of Senacherib's invasion. In his first march into Ju
dea, or in his return from the Egyptian expedition, he might
perhaps overrun these several clans of Arabians : their dis-r
tress on some such occasion is the subject of this prophecy.
14. — the southern country] ®xifixy, LXX; Austri, Vulg.
They read Train, which seeras to be right; for probably the
inhabitants of Teraa might be involved in the sarae calaraity
with their brethren and neighbours of Kedar, and not in a
condition to give thera assistance, and to relieve thera, in
their flight before the eneray, with bread and water. To
bring forth bread and water is an instance of comraon hu
manity in such cases of distress ; especially in these desert
countries, in which the coraraon necessaries of life, raore
particularly water, are not easily to be met with or procured,
Moses forbids the Ammonite and Moabite to be admitted
into the congregation of the Lord to the tenth generation :
one reason which he gives for this reprobation is, their orais
sion of the coraraon. offices of humanity towards the Israel
ites ; " because they met them not with bread and water in
the way, when they came forth out of Egypt ;" Deut. xxiu. 4.
17. — the mighty bowmen] Sagittariorum fortium, Vulg.
transposing, the two words, and reading nwp iliaa ; which
seeras to be right.
Ibid. For Jehovah hath spoken it.] The prophetic Car-
mina of Marcius, foretelling the battie of Cannae, Liv.xxv, 12,

250 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXI.
conclude with the sarae kind of soleran forra : — " Nara mihi
ita Jupiter fatus est." Observe, that the word DX3, (to pro
nounce, to declare), is the soleran Word appropriated to the
delivering of prophecies : — " Behold, I ara against the pro
phets, saith (Dxa) Jehovah, who use their tongues, iraxaii
Dxa, and solemnly pronounce, He hath pronounced it ;" Jer.
xxiii. 31. >
CHAPTER XXII.
This prophecy, ending vrith the 14th verse of this chap
ter, is entitled, " The Oracle concerning the Valley of
Vision," by which is meant Jerusalem, because, says Sal. b.
Melech, it was the place of prophecy. Jerusalem, accord
ing to Josephus, was built upon two opposite hUls, Sion and
Acra, separated by a vaUey in the midst : he speaks of ano
ther broad valley between Acra and Moriah, BeU. Jud. v.
13. vi. 6. It was the seat of divine revelation, the place
where chiefly prophetic vision was given, and where 'God
manifested himself visibly in the holy place. The prophecy
foreteUs the invasion of Jerusalem by the Assyrians under
Senacherib; or by the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnezzar.
Vitringa is of opinion, that the Prophet has both in riew;
that of the Chaldeans in the first part, ver. 1 — 5. (which
he thinks relates to the flight of Zedekiah, 2 Kings 3txv. 4,
5.) ; and that of the Assyrians in the latter part; which
agrees with the circumstances of that time, and particularly
describes the preparations made by Hezekiah for the defence
of the city, ver. 8^11. Corapare 2 Chron. xxxii. 2 — 5.
1. — are gone up to the house-tops.] The houses in the
East were in ancient times, as they are stUl generaUy, built
in one and the sarae uniform manner. The roof or top of
the house is always flat, covered with broad stones, or a
strong plaster of terrace, and guarded on every side with a
low parapet waU : see Deut. xxii. 8. The terrace is fre
quented as much as any part of the house. On this, as the
season favours, they walk, they eat, they sleep, they transact
business, (1 Sam. ix. 25. see also the LXX in that place),
they perform their devotions, (Acts x. 9.) The house is
built with a court within, into which chiefly the windows
open ; those that open to the street are so obstructed with
lattice-work, that no one either without or within can see
through them. Whenever therefore any thing is to be seen

Chap. XXII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 251
or heard in the streets, any public spectacle, any alarm of a
pubhc nature, every one immediately goes up to the house
top to satisfy his curiosity. In the sarae manner, when any
one had occasion to make any thing pubhc, the readiest and
most effectual way of doing it was to proclaim it frora the
house-tops to the people in the streets : " What ye hear in
the ear, that publish ye on the house-top," saith our Saviour,
Matt. X. 27. The people's running all to the tops of then-
houses gives a lively iraage of a sudden general alarm. Sir
John Chardin's MS note on this place is as foUows: —
" Dans les festes pour voir passer quelque chose, et dans
les maladies pour les annoncer aux voisins en allumant des
luraieres, le peuple monte sur les terrasses."
3. — are gone off together.] There seems to be some
what of an inconsistency in the sense, according to the pre
sent reading. If the leaders were bound, iiDX, how could
they flee away ? for their being bound, according to the ob
vious construction and course of the sentence, is a circura-
stance prior to their flight. I therefore follow Houbigant,
who reads liDn, reraoti sunt, they are gone off. ibj, trans-
migraverunt, Chald. which seems to confirm this emendation.
6. — the Syrian — ] It is not easy to say what Dix aai,
a chariot of men, can mean. It seems, by the form of the
sentence, which consists of three members, the first and the
third mentioning a particular people, that the second should
do so likewise; thus Diii?isi Dix aaia, " with chariots the
Syrian, and with horsemen :" the siraUitude of the letters
1 and 1 is so great, and the mistakes arising from it so fre
quent, that I readily adopt the correction of Houbigant,
DIX instead of Dix, which seems to me extreraely probable.
The conjunction i prefixed to Diwis seems necessary, in
whatever way the sentence is taken ; and it is confirraed by
five MSS (one ancient) and three editions. Kir was a
city belonging to the Medes. The Medes were subject to
the Assyrians in Hezekiah's tirae : see 2 Kings xvi. 9. and
xrii. 6. ; and so perhaps raight Elara (the Persians) likewise
be, or auxiliaries to them.
8. — the arsenal — ] BuUt by Solomon within the city,
and called the House of the forest of Lebanon ; probably
frora the great quantity of cedar from Lebanon which was
eraployed in the building : see 1 Kings vn. 2, 3.
9. And ye shall collect the toaters — ] There were two
pools in or near Jerusalem, supplied by springs : the upper

252 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXII.
pool, or the old pool, supplied by the spring called Gihon,
2 Chron. xxxii. 30. towards the higher part of the city, near
Sion or the city of David; and the lower pool, probably
supplied by Siloam, towards the lower part. When Heze
kiah was threatened with a siege by Senacherib, he stopped
up all the waters of the fountains without the city, and
brought them into the city by a conduit, or subterraneous
passage cut through the rock ; those of the old pool, to the
place where he made a double wall, so that the pool was be
tween the two waUs. This he did iri order to distress the
enemy, and to supply the city during the siege. This was
so great a work, that not only the historians have made par
ticular raention of it, 2 Kings xx. 20. 2 Chron. xxxii. 2, 3.
5. 30. ; but the son of Sirach also has celebrated it in his
encoraiura on Hezekiah : " Hezekiah fortified his city, and
brought in water into the midst thereof: he digged the hard
rock with iron, and made wells for water :" Eccl'us xlriii. 17.
11. — to him that hath disposed this] That is, to God,
the author and disposer of this visitation, the invasion with
which he now threatens you. The very same expressions are
applied to God, and upon the same occasion, chap, xxxvU, 26,
" Hast thou not heard, of old, that 1 have disposed it ;
And, of ancient times, that I have formed it ?"
14, the voice of Jehovah — ] The Vulg, has vox Do
mini; as if in his copy he had read nini bip : and, in truth,
without the word bip, it is not easy to raake out the sense of
the passage ; as it appears from the strange versions which
the rest of the ancients, (except Chald,), and many of the
moderns, have given of it ; as if the matter were revealed in,
or to, the ears of Jehovah ;« roi; ao-i Ka^ia, LXX, Vitrin
ga translates it, " revelatus est in auribus meis Jehovah;"
and refers to 1 Sara, ii, 27, iii, 21. : but the construction in
those places is different, and there, is no speech of God
^dded; which here seeras to want something more than the
verb nba 3 to introduce it. Compare chap. v. 9, where the
text is still more imperfect,
15, Go unto Shebna — ] The foUowing prophecy con
cerning Shebna seems to have very little relation to the
foregoing; except that it raight have been delivered about
the same time, and Shebna might be a principal person
araong those whose luxury and profaneness is severely re
prehended by the Prophet in the conclusion of that pro
phecy, ver, 11 — 14.

Chap. XXII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 833
Shebna the scribe, mentioned in the history of Hezekiah,
chap, xxxvi, seems to have been a different person frora this
Shebna, the treasurer or steward of the household, to whora
the prophecy relates. The Eliakira here mentioned was
probably the person, who, at the time of Senacherib's inva
sion, was actually treasurer, the son of HUkiah, If so, this
prophecy was delivered, as the preceding, which makes the
former part of the chapter, plainly was, some time before the
invasion of Senacherib, As to the rest, history affords us
no information.
Ibid, — and say unto him] Here are two words lost out of
the text; which are supplied by two MSS, (one ancient),
which read vbx niraxi ; by LXX, xxi ttmy xvra; and in the
same manner by all the ancient versions. It is to be ob
served, that this passage is raerely historical, and does not
adrait of that sort of ellipsis by which, in the poetical parts,
a person is frequently introduced speaking, without the usual
notice that what follows was delivered by hira,
16, thy sepulchre on high — in the rock] It has been ob
served before on chap, xiv, that persons of high rank in
Judea, and in raost parts of the East, were generally buried
in large sepulchral vaults hewn out in the rock for the use
of theraselves and their farailies. The vanity of Shebna is
set forth by his being so studious and careful to have his
sepulchre on high ; in a lofty vault, and that probably in a
high situation, that it raight be more conspicuous, Heze
kiah was buried nbrrab, sv «»«€««¦£<, LXX; in the chiefest,
says our translation ; rather, in the highest part of the se
pulchres of the sons of David, to do him the more honour ;
2 Chron, xxxii, 33, There are some monuments still re
maining in Persia of great antiquity, called Naksi Rustam,
which give one a clear idea of Shebna's pompous design for
his sepulchre. They consist of several sepulchres, each of
them hewn in a high rock near the top ; the front of the
rock to the valley below is adorned with carved work in re
lievo, being the outside of the sepulchre. Some of these
sepulchres are about thirty feet in the perpendicular frora
the valley ; which is itself raised perhaps above half as rauch
by the accumulation of the earth since they were raade. See
the description of them in Chardin, Pietro deUa Valle,
Thevenot, and Kempfer. Diodorus Siculus, Ub, xvu, men
tions these ancient monuments, and caUs them the sepulchres
of the kings of Persia,

254 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXII.
17, — cover thee] That is, thy face. This was the con
dition of mourners in general, and particularly of condemned
persons : see Esther vi, 12, vii, 8,
19, I will drive thee — ] iDinx, in the first person, Syr,
Vulg. 21, — to the inhabitants — ] , iail?lib, in the plural nura
ber, four MSS, (two ancient), LXX, Syr, Vulg.
22, — the key upon his shoulder.] As the robe and the
baldric, mentioned in the preceding verse, were the ensigns
of power and authority, so likewise was the key the mark of
office, either sacred or civil. The priestess of Juno is said
to be the key-bearer of the goddess, Kh.iiSyx,o? Hsx? : .Slschyl.
Suppl. 299. A feraale high in office under a great queen
has the sarae title : —
KxhXihn xXu^y^oq O?i.vfi7rixeo; BxtriMim.
Auctor Phoronidis ap. Clem. Alex. p. 418. Edit. Potter.
This mark of office was likewise among the Greeks, as here
in Isaiah, borne on the shoulder: the priestess of Ceres
xxrufix^ixy i^i xXxilx : Callim. Ceres, ver. 45. To corapre-
hend how the key could be borne on the shoulder, it wiU be
necessary to say somewhat of the form of it : but without
entering into a long disquisition, and a great deal of obscure
learning, concerning the locks and keys of the ancients, it
vriU be sufficient to observe, that one sort of keys, and that
probably the raost ancient, was of considerable magnitude,
and as to the shape very much bent and crooked. Aratus,
to give his reader an idea of the form of the consteUation
Cassiopeia, compares it to a key. It must be owned, that
the passage is very obscure ; but the learned Huetius has
bestowed a great deal of pains in explaining it, Animadvers.
in Manilii, lib. i. 355. and I think has succeeded very well
in it, Horaer, Odyss, xxi, 6, describes the key of Ulysses's
storehouse as imxii-rr-zif, of a large curvature; which Eusta
thius explains by saying it was '^^mayosi^yn, in shape like a
reap-hook, Huetius says, the consteUation Cassiopeia an
swers to this description ; the stars to the north raaking the
curve part, that is, the principal part of the key; the
southern stars, the handle. The curve part was introduced
into the key-hole; and, being properly directed by the
handle, took hold of the bolts within, and moved them from
their places. We may easily collect from this account, that
such a key would lie very well upon the shoulder; that it
must be of some considerable size and weight, and could

Chap. XXII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 235
hardly be coraraodiously carried othervidse, Ulysses's key
was of brass, and the handle of ivory : but this was a royal
key; the raore coramon ones were probably of wood. In
Egypt they have no other than wooden locks and keys to
this day ; even the gates of Cairo have no better : Baum-
garten, Peregr, i, 18, Thevenot, Part II, ch, 10,
In allusion to the iraage of the key as the ensign of
power, the unlimited extent of that power is expressed,
with great clearness as well as force, by the sole and exclu
sive authority to open and shut. Our Sariour therefore
has upon a similar occasion made use of a like manner of
expression, Matt, xvi, 19, ; and in Rev, in, 7, has applied
to himself the very words of the Prophet,
23, — a nail — ] In ancient times, and in the eastern
countries, as the way of life, so the houses were much more
simple than ours at present. They had not that quantity
and variety of furniture, nor those accommodations of all
sorts, with which we abound,' It was convenient and even
necessary for them, and it made an essential part in the
building of a house, to fiirnish the inside of the several
apartments with sets of spikes, nails, or large pegs, upon
which to dispose of, and hang up, the several moveables and
utensils in comraon use and proper to the apartraent. These
spikes they worked into the walls at the first erection of
thera — the walls being of such materials, that they could not
bear their being driven iri after#ards ; and they were con
trived so as to strengthen the waUs, by binding the parts
together, as well as to serve for convenience. Sir John
Chardin's account of this matter is this : " They do not
drive with a hararaer the nails that are put into the eastern
waUs : the waUs are too hard, being of brick ; or if they are
of clay, too raouldering : but they fix them in the brick
work as they are building. They are large naUs, with
square heads like dice, well made ; the ends being bent so
as to raake them cramp-irons. They comraonly place them
at the windows and doors, in order to hang upon them,
when they like, veUs and curtains:" Harmer, Observat, i,
p, 191, And we may add, that they were put in other
places too, in order to hang up other things of various
kinds; as it appears from this place of Isaiah, and from
Ezekiel xv, 3, who speaks of a pin, or nail, " to hang any
vessel thereon," The word used here for a naU of this sort,
is the same by which thqy express that instrument, the stake.

256 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXII.
or large pin of iron, with which they fastened down to the
ground the cords of their tents. We see, therefore, that
these nails were of necessary and common use, and of no
small importance, in all their apartments ; conspicuous, and
much exposed to observation : and if they seem to us mean
and insignificant, it is because we are not acquainted with
the thing itself, and have no narae to express it by, but
what conveys to us a low and contemptible idea, " Grace
hath been shewed from the Lord our God, (saith Ezraix, 8,),
to leave us a reranant to escape, and to give us a nail in his
holy place :" that is, as the raargin of our Bible explains it,
" a constant and sure abode,"
" He that doth lodge near her [Wisdom's] house.
Shall also fasten g, pin in her walls," Eccl'us xiv, 24.
The dignity and propriety of the raetaphor appears from
the Prophet Zechariah's use of it :
" From him shall be the corner-stone ; from him the nail,
Frpm him the battle-bow,
From him every ruler together." Zech, x, 4,
And Mohararaed, using the same word, calls Pharaoh the
lord or raaster of the Nails ; that is, well attended by nobles
and officers capable of adrainistering his affairs ; Koran,
Sur, xxxviii, 1 1, and Ixxxix, 9, So some understand this
passage of the Koran : Mr Sale seeras to prefer another in
terpretation, Taylor,- in his Concordance, thinks ini means the piUar
or post that stands in the middle, and supports the tent, in
which such pegs are fixed to hang their arras, &c, upon ;
referring to Shaw's Travels, p, 287, But ini is never used,
as far as it appears to me, in that sense. It was indeed
necessary that tne pillar of the tent should have such pegs
on it for that purpose ; but the hanging of such things in
this manner upon this pillar, does not prove that ini was
the piUar itself,
23, — a glorious seat — ] That is, his father's house, and
all his own family, shall be gloriously seated, shaU flourish
in honour, and prosperity ; and shall depend upon him, and
be supported by hira.
24. — all the glory — ] One considerable part of the mag
nificence of the eastern princes, consisted in the great quanti
ty of gold and silver vessels which they had for various uses.
" Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels

Chap. XXII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 257
of the House of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold :
none were of silver ; it was nothing accounted of in Solo-
raon's days;" 1 Kings x, 21, " 'The vessels in the House
of the forest of Lebanon (the arraoury of Jerusalera so
called) were two hundred targets, and three hundred shields,
of beaten gold;" Ibid. ver. 16, 17. These were ranged in
order upon the walls of the armoury, (see Cant. iv. 4.),
upon pins worked into the walls on purpose, as above men
tioned. Eliakim is considered as a principal stake of this
sort, immoveably fastened in the wall, for the support of all
vessels destined for coraraon or sacred uses : that is, as the
principal support of the whole civU and ecclesiastical polity.
And the consequence of his continued power will be the
promotion and flourishing- condition of his family and de
pendents, from the highest to the lowest.
Ibid. — meaner vessels] Dibaa seeras to mean earthen
vessels of common use, britde, and of little value, (see Lam.
iv. 2. Jer. xlvui. 12.), in opposition to niaax, goblets of
gold and silver used in the sacrifices; Exod. xxiv. 6,
25, The nail fastened — ] This must be understood of
Shebna, as a repetition and confirmation of the sentence
above denounced against him.

CHAPTER XXIII,
1, Howl, 0 ye ships of Tarshish — ] This prophecy de-
nounceth the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, It
opens with an address to the Tyrian negociators and sailors
at Tarshish, (Tartessus in Spain), a place which, in the
course of their trade, they gready frequented. The news
of the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar is said to be
brought to them from Chittira, the islands and coasts of the
Mediterranean: " For the Tyrians, (says Jerora on ver, 6,),
when they saw they had no other means of escaping, fled in
their ships, and took refuge in Carthage, and the islands of
the Ionian and Egean Sea :" from whence the news would
spread and reach Tarshish, So also Jarchi on the place,
"This seeras to be the raost probable interpretation of this
verse, 2, Be silent] SUence is a raark of grief and consterna
tion : see chap, xlvii, 5, Jereraiah has finely expressed this

258 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXIII.
" The elders of the daughter of Sion sit on the ground, they
are silent :
They have cast up dust on their heads, they have girded thera
selves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the
ground," Lam, ii, 10,
3, And the seed of the Nile — ] The Nile is caUed here
Shichor, as it is Jer, ii, 18. and 1 Chron, xiii, 5, It had this
narae frora the blackness of its waters charged with the raud
which it brings down frora Ethiopia, when it overflows, " Et
viridem .^gyptura nigra foecundat arena :" as it was caUed
by the Greeks Melas, and by the Latins Melo, for the same
reason. See Servius on the above Une of VirgU, Georg, iv,
291, It was called Siris by the Ethiopians; by some sup
posed to be the same with Shichor, Egypt, by its extraor
dinary fertility, caused by the overflowing of the Nile, sup
plied the neighbouring nations with corn ; by which branch
of trade the Tyrians gained great wealth,
4, Be ashamed, O Sidon — ] Tyre is called, ver, 12, the
daughter of Sidon, " The Sidonians, (says Justin, xviii, 3,),
when their city was taken by the king of Ascalon, betook
theraselves to their ships, and landed, and built Tyre,"
Sidon, as the mother city, is supposed to be deeply affected
with the calaraity of her daughter.
Ibid, — nor educated — ] inraraiii, so an ancient MS, pre
fixing the 1, which refers to the negative preceding, and is
equivalent to xbi. See Deut, xxxiii, 6, Prov, xxx, 3,
7, — whose antiquity is of the earliest date.] Justin, in
the passage above quoted, had dated the building of Tyre at
a certain number of years before the taking of Troy ; but the
number is lost in the present copies. Tyre, though not so
old as Sidon, yet was of very high antiquity : it was a strong
city even in the time of Joshua: it is called is isara iir,
" the city of the fortress of Sor," Josh, xix, 29, Interpre
ters raise difficulties in regard to this passage, and wUl not
allow it to have been so ancient : vrith what good reason, I
do not see ; for it is called by the same narae, " the fortress
of Sor," in the history of David, 2 Sam, xxiv, 7, ; and the
circumstances of the history determine the place to be the
very same,
10, O daughter of Tarshish — ] Tyre is called the daugh
ter of Tarshish ; perhaps because, Tyre being ruined, Tar
shish was becorae the superior city, and raight be considered
as the metropolis of the "Tyrian people ; or rather, because of

Chap. XXIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 259
the close connexion and perpetual intercourse between thera ;
according to that latitude of signification in wWch the He
brews use the words son and daughter, to express any sort
of conjunction and dependence whatever, nrra, a girdle,
which collects, binds, and keeps together the loose rairaent,
when applied to a river, raay mean a mound, raole, or arti
ficial dam, which contains the waters, and prevents them frora
spreading abroad, A city, taken by siege, and destroyed,
whose walls are deraolished, whose policy is dissolved, whose
wealth is dissipated, whose people is scattered over the wide
country, is corapared to a river whose banks are broken down,
and its waters, let loose and overflowing all the neighbouring
plains, are wasted and lost. This raay possibly be the raean
ing of this very obscure verse ; of which I can find no other
interpretation that is at all satisfactory,
13, Behold the land of the Chaldeans — ] This verse is
extreraely obscure: the obscurity arises frora the ambiguity
of the agents which belong to the verbs, and of the objects
expressed by the pronouns ; from the change of number in
the verbs, and of gender in the pronouns. The MSS
give us no assistance ; and the ancient versions very little.
The Chaldee and Vulg, read niraii? in the plural number,
I have followed the interpretation, which araong raany
different ones seemed to me most probable, that of Perizo-
nius and Vitringa,
The Chaldeans, Chasdim, are supposed to have had their
origin, and to have taken their name, from Chesed the son
of Nachor, the brother of Abrahara, They were known by
that narae in the tirae of Moses ; who calls Ur in Mesopo
tamia, from whence Abraham came, to distinguish it from
other places of the same name, Ur of the Chaldeans, And Je
remiah calls them an ancient nation. This is not inconsis
tent with what Isaiah here says of them : " This people was
not;" that is, they were of no account, (see Deut, xxxii, 21,) ;
they were not reckoned among the great and potent nations
of the world, till of later times : they were a rude, uncivilized,
barbarous people, without laws, without settled habitations ;
wandering in a vride desert country, Diis, and addicted to
rapine, Uke the wild Arabians, Such they are represented
to have been in the time of Job, (i, 17,), and such they con
tinued to be till Assur, some powerful king of Assyria, ga
thered thera together, and settled thera in Babylon, and the
neighbouring country. This probably was Ninus, whom I

260 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXIIIj
suppose to have Uved in the tirae of the Judges, In this,
with many eminent chronologers, I follow the authority of
Herodotus; who says, that the Assyrian monarchy lasted
but five hundred and twenty years, Ninus got possession of
Babylon frora the Cuthean Arabians, the successors of Nira-
rod in that erapire, collected the Chaldeans, and settled a
colony of them there, to secure the possession of the city,
which he and his successors gready enlarged and ornamented.
They had perhaps been usefid to hira in his wars, and might
be likely to be further useful in keeping under the old inha
bitants of that city, and of the country belonging to it ; ac
cording to the policy of the Assyrian kings, who generally
brought new people into the conquered countries. See Isa,
xxxvi, 17, 2 Kings xvii, 6, 24, The testiraony of Dicae-
archus, a Greek historian con teraporary with Alexander,
(apud Steph, de Urbibus, in v, x«;.Sas<05), in regard to the
fact is reraarkable, though he is mistaken in the name of the
king he speaks of: He says, " That a certain king of Assy
ria, the fourteenth in succession from Ninus," (as he might
be, if Ninus is placed, as in the coraraon chronology, eight
hundred years higher than we have above set hira), " naraed
as it is said Chaldaeus, having gathered together and united
all the people called Chaldeans, built the faraous city Ba
bylon, upon the Euphrates."
14. Howl, O ye ships — ] The Prophet Ezekiel hath
enlarged upon this part of the same subject with great force
and elegance : —
" Thus saith the Lord Jehovah concerning Tyre :
At the sound of thy fall, at the cry of the wounded,
At the great slaughter in the midst of thee, shall not the
islands tremble ?
And shall not all the princes of the sea descend from their
thrones.
And lay aside their robes, and strip off their embroidered gar
ments ?
They shall clothe themselves with trembling, they shall sit on
the ground ;
They shall tremble every moment, they shall be astonished at
thee.
And they shall utter a lamentation over thee, and shall say
unto thee :
How art thou lost, thou that wast inhabited from the seas !
The renowned city, that was strong in the sea, she and her
inhabitants !

Chap. XXIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH.
That struck with terror all her neighbours I
Now shall the coasts tremble in the day of thy fall,
And the isles that are in the sea shall be troubled at thy de
parture." Ezek. xxvi. 15 — 18.
15. According to the days of one king^-] That is, of
one kingdora. See Dan. vii. 17. viii, 20. Nebuchadnez
zar began his conquests in the first year of his reign ; frora
thence to the taking of Babylon by Cyrus are seventy years ;
at which time the nations conquered by Nebuchadnezzar
were to be restored to liberty. These seventy years limit
the duration of the Babylonish monarchy. Tyre was taken
by him towards the middle of that period ; so did not .serve
the king of Babylon during the whole period, but only for
the remaining part of it. This seeras to be the meaning of
Isaiah : The days allotted to the one king, or kingdora, are
seventy years ; Tyre, with the rest of the conquered nations,
shall continue in a state of subjection and desolation to the
end of that period — not from the beginning and through
the whole of the period ; for, by being one of the latest con
quests, the duration of that state of subjection in regard to
her was not much more than half of it, " All these nations,"
saith Jeremiah, (xxv, 11,), " shall serve the king of Babylon
seventy years," Some of them were conquered sooner, some
later ; but the end of this period was the coramon term for
the deUverance of them all.
There is another way of computing the seventy years,
from the year in which Tyre was actually taken to the nine
teenth of Darius Hystaspis; whom 'the Phenicians, or Ty
rians, assisted against the lonians, and probably on that
account might then be restored to their former liberties and
privileges. But I think the former the more probable in
terpretation. Ibid, — sing as the harlot singeth—^] " Fidicinara esse
meretricura est," says Donatus in Terent, Eunuch, iii, 2, 4,
" Nee raeretrix tibicina, cujus
Ad strepitum salias," Hor. I. Epist. xiv, 25,
Sir John Chardin, in his MS note on this place, says : " C'est
que les vieilles prostituees — ne font que chanter quand les
jeunes dancent, et les animer par I'instruraent et par la voix,"
17, 18, And at the end of seventy years — ] Tyre, after
its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, recovered, as it is here
foretold, its ancient trade, wealth, and grandeur ; as it did
X

26-2 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXIII.
likewise after a second destruction by Alexander, It be
carae Christian early with the rest bf the neighbouring coun
tries, St Paul himself found many Christians there. Acts
xxi, 4, It suffered much in the Diocletian persecution.
It was an archbishoprick under the patriarchate of Jerusa
lem, with fourteen bishopricks under its jurisdiction. It
continued Christian till it was taken by the Saracens in
639: was recovered by the Christians in 1124, But in
1280 was conquered by the Mamelukes; and afterwards
taken frora thera by the Turks in 1516, Since that time it
has sunk into utter decay ; is now a mere ruin ; a bare rock ;
" a place to spread nets upon," as the Prophet Ezekiel fore
told it should be, chap, xxvi, 14, See iSandys's Travels;
Vitringa on the place ; Bishop Newton on the Prophecies,
Dissert, xi,
CHAPTER XXIV,
From the xiiith chapter to the xxiiid inclusive, the fate
of several cities and nations is denounced ; — of Babylon,
of the PhUistines, Moab, Damascus, Egypt, Tyre, After
having foretold the destruction of the foreign nations, ene
mies of Judah, the Prophet declares the judgments impend
ing on the people of God themselves, for their wickedness
and apostasy ; and the desolation that shall be brought on
their whole country.
The xxivth, and the three following chapters, seem to
have been delivered about the same tirae — before the de
struction of Moab by Shalraaneser, (see xxv, 10,) ; conse
quently before the destruction of Saraaria ; probably in the
beginning of Hezekiah's reign. But concerning the parti
cular subject of the xxivth chapter, interpreters are not at
all agreed; sorae refer it to the desolation caused hy the
invasion of Shalmaneser ; others to the invasion of Nebuch
adnezzar; and others to the destruction of the city and
nation by the Romans, Vitringa is singular in his opinion,
who applies it to the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes,
Perhaps it may have a view to all of the three great desola
tions of the country, by Shalmaneser, by Nebuchadnezzar,
and by the Romans ; especially the last^ to which some parts
of it may seem more peculiarly applicable. However, the
Prophet chiefly employs general images ; such as set forth
the greatness and universality of the ruin and desolation

Chap. XXIV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 263
that is to be brought upon the country by these great revo
lutions, involving aU orders and degrees of men, changing
entirely the face of things, and destroying the whole polity
both religious and civil; without entering into minute cir
cumstances, or necessarily restraining it by particular marks
to one great event, exclusive of others of the same kind.
4. The world languisheth] The world is the same with
the land ; that is, the kingdoras of Judah and Israel ; orbis
Israeliticus. See note on chap. xui. 11.
5. — the law] niin, singular: so read LXX, Syr.
Chald. 6. — are destroyed] , For iin, read lam : see LXX,
Syr. Chald. Syra.
9. — palm wine — ] This is the proper raeaning of the
word law, irixi^xi see note on chap. v. 11. All enjoyment
shall cease ; the sweetest wine shall become bitter to their
taste. 11. — is passed away]- For nair? read mar; trans
posing a letter : Houbigant, Secker. Five MSS (two
ancient) add ba after Ti?ni?7a : LXX add the same word be-.
fore it.
14. But these — ] That is, they that escaped out of these
calamities. The great distresses brought upon Israel and
Judah drove the people away, and dispersed them aU over
the neighbouring countries: they fled to Egypt, to Asia
Minor, to the islands and the coasts of Greece. They were
to be found in great numbers in raost of the principal cities
of these countries. Alexandria was in a great raeasure
peopled by thera. They had synagogues for their worship
in raany places ; and were greatly instruraental in propagat
ing the knowledge of the true God araong these heathen
nations, and preparing thera for the reception of Christi
anity. This is what the Prophet seeras to raean by the cele
bration of the narae of Jehovah in the waters, in the dis
tant coasts, and in the utterraost parts of the land. Di)3,
the waters ; v^a^, LXX; v^xrx, Theod. ; not u'^ia, ffom the
sea, 15. In the distant coasts of the sea] For Diixa, I sup
pose we ought to read Duxa ; which is in a great degree
justified by the repetition of the word in the next member
of the sentence, with the addition of Din to vary the phrase,
exactly in the manner of the Prophet. Dux is a- word
chiefly applied to any distant countries, especially those

264 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXIV.
fying on the Mediterranean Sea, Others conjecture Dnxia,
Dnna, Diraxa, Dirara, Diiina; Dnixa, a ixa, illustrati;
Le Clerc, Twenty-three MSS read Diiixa, The LXX do
not acknowledge the reading of the text, expressing here
only the word DuX, ly rxi; tno-oi?, and that not repeated. But
MSS Pachom, and i, D, ii. supply in this place the defect
in the other copies of LXX, thus : A<» ryro i .S<i|« K«|hb irxi
ty rxig vtiron ths ^xXxo-o-ri;' it rxif vijo-oij to ovoftoe t8 KtipjB ©£8 lo-^xnX
evSo|ov £5-«(. According to which the LXX had in their
Hebrew copy Duxa, repeated afterward, not Diixa,
16, But I said — ] The Prophet speaks in the person
of the inhabitants of the land stiU remaining there ; who
should be pursued by divine vengeance, and suffer repeated
distresses from the inroads and depredations of their power
ful enemies. Agreeably to what he said before in a gene
ral denunciation of these calamities,
" Though there be a tenth part remaining in it ;
Even this shall undergo a repeated destruction,"
Chap, vi, 13, See the note there.
Ibid, The plunderers plunder] See note on chap, xxi, 2,
17, 18, The terror, the pit, — ] If they escape one cala
mity, another shall overtake thera ;
" As if a man should flee from a lion, and a bear should over
take him :
Or should betake himself to his house, and lean his hand on
the wall.
And a serpent should bite him." Amos v, 19,
For, as our Saviour expressed it in a like parabolical man
ner, " wheresoever the carcass is, there shall the eagles be
gathered together ;" Matt, xxiv, 28, The images are taken
from the different methods of hunting and taking wUd beasts
which were anciently in use. The terror was a line strung
with feathers of all colours, which fluttering in the air scared
and frightened the beasts into the toils, or into the pit, which
was prepared for them, " Nee est mirum, cura raaximos
ferarum greges linea pennis distincta contineat, et in insidias
agat, ab ipso effectu dicta Forraido :" Seneca de Ira, ii,
12, The pit, or pit-fall. Fovea ; digged deep in the ground,
and covered over with green boughs, turf, &c, in order to
deceive thera, that they might fail into it unawares. The
snare, or toils, Indago; a series of nets, inclosing at first a
great space of ground, in which the wild beasts were known
to be ; and then drawn in by degrees into a narrower com-

CuAP. XXIV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 265
pass, tUl they were at last closely shut up, and entangled in
them. For bipra a MS reads lasra, as it is in Jer. xlviu. 44. ; and
so the Vulg. and Chald, But perhaps it is only, like the
latter, a Hebraism, and means no more than the simple pre
position ra. See Psal, cii, 6, For it does not appear, that
the terror was intended to scare the wild beasts by its noise.
The paronomasia is very remarkable ; pachad pachath pach :
and that it was a common proverbial form, appears from
Jereraiah's repeating it in the same words, chap, xlviiL
43, 44,
\%. from the pit] For y^Wd, from the midst of, a MS
reads p, from, as it is in Jer, xlvUi, 44, ; and so likewise
LXX, Syr, Vulg,
19, The land] " yixn, forte delendura n, ut ex prae-
cedente ortum, Vid, seqq," Secker,
20, — like a lodge for a night.] See note on chap, i, 8,
21 — 23, — on high, — on earth — ] That is, the ecclesi
astical and civil polity of the Jews ; which shall be destroy
ed : The nation shall continue in a state of depression and
dereliction for a long tirae. The iraage seeras to be taken
from the practice of the great monarchs of that time;
who, when they had thrown their wretched captives into a
dungeon, never gave theraselves the trouble of inquiring
about thera ; but let thera lie a long tirae in that miserable
condition, wholly destitute of relief, and disregarded, God
shall at length revisit and restore his people in the last age ;
and then the kingdom of God shall be established in such
perfection, as wholly to obscure and eclipse the glory of the
teraporary, typical, preparative kingdom now subsisting.
" The figurative language of the Prophets is taken from
the analogy between the world natural, and an empire or
kingdora considered as a world politic. Accordingly the
whole world natural, consisting of heaven and earth, signifies
the whole world politic, consisting of thrones and people,
or so rauch of it as is considered in prophecy; and the
things in that world signify the analogous things in this.
For the heavens and the things therein signify thrones and
dignities, and those who enjoy thera; and the earth, with
the things thereon, the inferior people ; and the lowest parts
of the earth, called hades or hell, the lowest or raost misera
ble part of them, — Great earthquakes, and the shaking of
heaven and earth, are put for the shaking of kingdoms, so

266 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXIV.
as to distract and overthrow them; the creating a new
heaven and earth, and the passing of an old one, or the be
ginning and end of a world, for the rise and ruin of a body
politic signified thereby, — The sun, for the whole species
and race of kings, in the kingdoms of the world politic ;
the moon, for the body of the common people, considered
as the king's wife; the stars, for subordinate princes and
great men ; or for bishops and rulers of the people of God,
when the sun is Christ ;— setting of the sun, moon, and
stars ; darkening the sun, turning the moon into blood, and
falling of the stars, for the ceasing of a kingdora," Sir I.
Newton, Observations on the Prophecies, Part I, chap, ii.

CHAPTER XXV.
It doth not appear to rae, that this chapter hath any close
and particular connexion with the chapter imraediately pre
ceding, taken separately, and by itself. The subject of that
was the desolation of the land of Israel and Judah, by the
just judgment of God, for the wickedness and disobedience
of the people ; which, taken by itsellj seeras not with any
propriety to introduce a hymn of thanksgiring to God for
his mercies to his people in delivering them frora their ene
mies. But taking the whole course of prophecies, from the
xiiith to the xxivth chapter inclusive, in which the Prophet
foretells the destruction of several cities and nations, enemies
to the Jews, and of the land of Judah itself, yet vrith inti
mations of a remnant to be saved, and a restoration to be at
length effected by a glorious establishment of the kingdom
of God ; with a view to this extensive scene of God's pro
vidence in all its parts, and in all its consequences, the Pro
phet may well be supposed to break out into this song of
praise ; in which his mind seems to be more possessed with
the prospect of future mercies than vrith the recollection of
the past.
2. — the city — ] Nineveh, Babylon, Ar Moab, or any
other strong fortress possessed by the enemies of the people
of God.
For the first iirra, Syr. Vulg. read iirn ; LXX, and
Chald. read, in the plural, Dnrj transposing the letters.
After the second iirra, a MS adds bab.
Ibid, — the proud ones — ] For Dnr, strangers, MS

Chap. XXV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 267
Bodl. and another read Diir, the proud: so likewise the
LXX ; for they render it «o-sS«» here, and in verse 5th, as
they do in sorae other places: see Deut. xviii. 20. 22.
Another MS reads DilS, adversaries ; which also makes a
good sense. But Diir and Diir are often confounded by the
great similitude of the letters 1 and 1. See Mal. iu. 15.
iv- 1. PsaL xix. 14. apud LXX ; and Psal. liv. 5. (where
Chald. reads Diir) compared with Psal. Ixxxvi. 14.
4. — a winter storm.] For lip read lip : or as l^r from
Iir, so lip from lip : CapeUus.
5. — the proud — ] The same mistake here as in ver. 2. :
see note there. Here Diir, the proud, is parallel to Dianr,
the formidable ; as in Psal. liv. 5. and Ixxxvi. 14.
Ibid. As theheat by a thick cloud.] For am, Syr. Chald.
Vulg. and two MSS, read ama ; which is a repetition of
the beginning of the foregoing parallel line : and the verse
taken out of the paraUel forra, and raore fully expressed,
would run thus : " As a thick cloud interposing tempers
the heat of the sun on the burnt soU, so shalt thou, by the
interposition of thy power, bring low and abate the tumult
of the proud, and the triuraph of the formidable."
6. — shall make for all the people a feast.] A feast is a
proper and usual expression of joy in consequence of vic
tory, or any other great success. The feast here spoken of
is to be celebrated on Mount Sion, and all the peoples with
out distinction are to be invited to it. This can be no other
than the celebration of the establishment of Christ's king
dom, which is frequently represented in die gospel under
the image of a feast ; where many shaU corae frora the east
and west, and shall sit down at table with Abrahara, Is^ac,
and Jacob, in the kingdora of heaven ;" Matt.viii.il. See
also Luke xiv, 16, xxii, 29, 30, This sense is fully con
firraed by the concoraitants of this feast expressed in the
next verse ; the removing of the veil from the tace of the
nations, and the abolition of death : the first of which is
obriously and clearly explained of the preaching of the gos
pel; and the second must mean the blessing of imraortality
procured for us by Christ, " who hath abolished death, and
through death hath destroyed him that had the power of
deadi," Ibid, — of old wines] Heb, lees ; that is, of wines kept
long on the lees. The word used to express the lees in the
original signifies the preservers ; because they preserve the

268 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXV.
Strength and flavour of the wine, " All recent wines, after
the fermentation has ceased, ought to be kept on their lees
for a certain time; which greatly contribute to increase
their strength and flavour. Whenever this first fermenta
tion has been deficient, they wUl retain a more rich and
sweet taste than is natural to them in a recent true vinous
state ; and unless further fermentation is promoted by their
lying longer on their own lees, they will never attain their
genuine strength and flavour, but run into repeated and
ineffectual fermentations, and soon degenerate into a Uquor
of an acetous kind, — AU wines of a light and austere kind,
by a fermentation too great, or too long continued, cer^
tainfy degenerate into a weak sort of vinegar; while the
stronger not only require, but wiU safely bear a stronger
and often repeated fermentation ; and are more apt to de
generate from a defect than excess of ferraentation, into a
vapid, ropy, and at length into a putrescent state:" Sir
Edward Barry, Observations on the Wines of the Ancients,
p, 9, 10,
Thevenot observes particularly of the Schiras wine, that,
after it is refined from the lees, it is apt to grow sour : " II
a beaucoup de lie; c'est pourquoi il donne puissemment
dans la teste ; et pour le rendre plus traitable, on le passe
par un chausse d'hypoeras : apres quoi il est fort clair, et
moins fumeux, lis mettent ce vin dans des grandes jarres
de terre, qui tiennent dix ou douze jusqu'a quatorze cara-
bas : raais quand l'on a entam# une jarre, il faut la vuider
au plutost, et mettre le vin qu'on en tire dans des bouteiUes
ou carabas ; car si l'on y manque en le laissant quelque tems
apres que la jarre est entamee, U se gate et s'aigrit:''
Voyages, tora, ii, p, 245.
This clearly explains the very elegant coraparison, or
rather aUegory, of Jeremiah ; where the reader will find a
remarkable example of the mixture of the proper with the
allegorical, not uncommon in the Hebrew poets :
" Moab hath been at ease from his youth,
And he hath settled upon his lees ;
Nor hath he been drawn off from vessel to vessel.
Neither hath he gone into captivity i
Wherefore his taste remaineth in him.
And his flavour is not changed," Jer, xlviii, 11.
Sir John Chardin's MS note on this place of Jeremiah
is as follows : " On change ainsi le vin de cupe en cupe en

Chap. XXV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 269
Orient ; et quand on en entame une, il faut la vuider en
petites cupes ou bouteiUes, sans quoy il s'aigrit,"
7, —the face of all—] MS Bodl. reads ba i3B br-
The word las has been removed from its right place into
the line above, where it makes no sense ; as Houbigant con
jectured, 9, — shall they say — ] So LXX and Vulg, in the plural
number. They read iiraxi, Syr, reads niraxi, Thou shalt
say, • 10, — shall give rest — ] " Heh. riMn, quiescet. Annon
nian, quietem dabit, ut Graeci, xyx-nxvo-u 'iota-a, et Copt,?"
Mr Woide, That is, " shall give peace and quiet to
Sion, by destroying the enemy ;" as it follows.
Ibid, As the straw , is threshed — ] " Hoc juxta ritura
loquitur Palaestinae et raultarura Orientis provinciarura,
quae ob pratorum et faeni penuriam paleas preparant esui
animantium. Sunt autera carpenta ferrata rotis per raediura
in serrarura raodum se volventibus, qua stipulam conterunt;
et comminuunt in paleas, Quomodo igitur plaustris ferratis
?aleffi conteruntur, sic conteretur Moab sub eo ; sive sub
)ei potentia, sive in seraetipso, ut nihil in eo integri reraa-
neat :" Hieron, in loc. See Note on chap. xxvUi. 27.
Ibid. — under the wheels of the ear.] For naraira, LXX,
Syr. Vulg. read naaira ; which I -have followed. See
Joshua XV. 31. compared with xix. 5. where there is a mis
take very nearly the same. The Keri, iraa, is confirraed
by twenty-eight MSS (seven ancient) and three editions.
11. As he that sinketh stretcheth out his hands to swim.]
There is great obscurity in this place : sorae understand
God as the agent ; others Moab. I have chosen the latter
sense, as I cannot conceive that the stretching out of the
hands of a swiramer in swiraraing, can be any illustration of
the action of God stretching out his hands over Moab to
destroy it. I take nmi?n, altering the point on the u? on
the authority of LXX, to be the participle of nnia, the
same with niu? and nnil?, inclinari, deprimi ; and that the
Prophet designed a paronomasia here, a figure which he
frequently uses, between the sirailar words nnn? and ninia.
As vnnn, in his place, or on the spot, as we say, in the
preceding verse, gives us an idea of the sudden and cora
plete destruction of Moab ; so laipa, in the midst of him,
means, that this destruction shall be open, and exposed to
the view of all : The neighbouring nations shall plainly see

270 NOTES ON ISAIAH, Chap, XXV,
him struggling i
waters exerts all
from drowning.

him struggling against it, as a man in the midst of the deep
waters exerts all his efforts, by swiraraing, to save himself

CHAPTER XXVI,
1, — we have a strong city] In opposition to the city of
die enemy, which God hath destroyed, chap, xxv, 2, ; see
the note there,
3, — they have trusted] So Chald, i naa, Syr, and Vulg,
read lanaa, we have trusted. Schroeder, Gram, Hebr, p,
360, explains the present reading, niaa, impersonally, con-
fisum est.
4, — in Jehovah] In Jah Jehovah, Heb, ; but see
Houbigant, not. in cap. xii. 2.
8. We have placed our confidence in thy name] LXX,
Syr. and Chald. read laiip, without the pronoun annexed.
9. — have I desired thee] Forty-one MSS (nine ancient),
and five editions, read ^1n11x. It is proper to note this;
because the second i being omitted in the text, Vulg. and
many others have rendered it in the third person.
16. — we have sought thee — ] So LXX, and two MSS,
liaips, in the first person. And so perhaps it should be
laps, in the first person : but how LXX read this word is
not clear ; and this last meraber of the verse is extremely
obscure. For irab the LXX read lab, in the first person likewise:
a frequent mistake ; see note on chap. x. 29.
18, -^-we have brought forth wind] The learned pro
fessor Michaelis explains this image in the following man
ner: — " Rariorem morbura describi, empneuraatosin, aut
ventosara molam, dictum ; quo quae laborant diu et sibi et
peritis medicis gravidae videntur, tanderaque post omnes
verffi graviditatis molestias et labores ventum ex utero emit-
tunt : quem morbura passira describunt raedici :'' Syntagma
Comraent, vol, ii. p. 165. The Syriac translator seems to
have understood it in this manner : " Enixi sumus, ut illse,
quae ventos pariunt."
Ibid. — in the land] yixa, so a MS, LXX, Syr, and
Vulg. 19. — my deceased] All the ancient versions render it
in the plural ; they read inibaa, my dead bodies. Syr. and
Chald, read Dninibaa, their dead bodies.

Chap. XXVI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 271
Ibid, — of the dawn] Lucis, Vulg, ; so also Syr, and
Chald, The deliverance of the people of God frora a state of the
lowest depression, is explained by images plainly taken from
the resurrection of the dead. In the same manner the Pro
phet Ezekiel represents the restoration of the Jewish nation
from a state of utter dissolution, by the restoring of the dry
bones to life, exhibited to hira in a vision, chap, xxxvii,
which is directly thus applied and explained, ver, 11 — 13,
And this deUverance is expressed with a raanifest opposition
to what is here said above, ver, 14, of the great lords and
tyrants under whora they had groaned ;
" They are dead, they shall not live ;
They are deceased tyrants, they shall not rise :"
that they should be destroyed utterly, and should never be
restored to their forraer power and glory. If appears from
hence, that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was
at that time a popular and comraon doctrine : for an image
which is assumed in order to express or represent any thing
in the way of allegory or raetaphor, whether poetical or pro
phetical, raust be an iraage coraraonly known and under
stood ; otherwise it wUl not answer the purpose for which it
is assuraed, 20, Come, O my people; retire — ] An exhortation to
patience and resignation under oppression, with a confident
expectation of deliverance, by the power of God raanifestly
to be exerted in the destruction of the oppressor. It seeras
to be an allusion to the coramand of Moses to' the Israelites,
when the destroying angel was to go through the land of
Egypt, " not to go out at the door of their houses until the
morning ;" Exod, xii, 22, And before the passage of the
Red Sea : " Fear ye not, stand stiU, and see the salvation
of Jehovah : — Jehovah shall fight for you, and ye shall
hold your peace;" Exod, xiv, 13, 14,

CHAPTER XXVII, ^
The subject of this chapter seeras to be the nature, the
measure, and the design of God's dealings with his people :
ver, 1, his judgments inflicted on their great and powerful
enemies : ver, 2, his constant care and protection of his fa
vourite vineyard, in the form of a dialogue : ver, 7, the mo-

272 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXVII.
deration and lenity with which the severity of his judgments
have been tempered : ver, 9, the end and design of them,
to recover them from idolatry ; and, ver, 12, the recalling
of them, on their repentance, from their several disper
sions. The first verse sfferas connected with the two last
verses of the preceding chapter,
I, Leviathan, Sfc] The aniraals here mentioned seem
to be, — the crocodile, rigid, by the stiffness of the back-bone,
so that he cannot reaidily turn himself, when he pursues his
prey; hence the easiest way of escaping from him is by
making frequent and short turnings : the serpent, or dragon,
flexible and winding ; which coils himself up in a circular
form : the sea-monster, or the whale. These are used alle-
gorically, without doubt, for great potentates, enemies and
persecutors of the people of God : but to specify the parti
cular persons or states designed by the Prophet under these
images is a matter of great difficulty, and comes not neces
sarily within the design of these notes,
2, — the beloved vineyard] For Iran, a great number of
MSS, and sorae printed editions, have Iran ; which is con
firraed by LXX, and Chald.
Ibid, —a responsive song] That n3r> to answer, signi- .
fies occasionally to sing responsively ; and that this mode of
singing was frequently practised among the ancient Jews,
see De S. Poes. Hebr. Prael. xix. at the beginning.
3. I will take care of her] For IpSi ^S, Syr. reads ipsxi :
and fifteen MSS (six ancient), and six editions, read ipsx,
in the first person.
4. / have no wall] For nran, LXX and Syr. read
nrain. An ancient MS has nram. For na, two MSS.
read Da, plural. The vineyard wishes for a wall, and a
fence of thorns; human strength and protection; (as the
Jews were too apt to apply to their powerful neighbours for
assistance, and to trust to the shadow of Egypt) : Jehovah
replies, that this would not avail her, nor defend her against
his wrath : he counsels her therefore to betake herself to his
protection. On which she entreats him to raake peace with
her, " About Tripoly there are abundance of vineyards and
gardens, eiiclo.sed for the most part with hedges; which
chiefly consist of the rhamnus, paliurus, oxyacantha," &c, :
Rawolf, p, 21, 22, A fence of thorns is esteemed equal to
a wall for strength, being commonly represented as impene
trable. See Micah vu, 4, Hos, ii, 6,

Chap. XXVII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 273
Ibid, — of the thorn and brier] Seven MSS (two an
cient), and one edition, and Syr, Vulg, Aquila, read nill?i,
with the conjunction i prefixed,
5. Ah .'] For ix, I read iix, as it was at first in a MS,
The 1 was easily lost, being followed by another i,
6, —from the root] For ii?ni?i, I read with the Syr.
ii?iii?ra. And for nisiy*^*' ""iS iJJisi, joining the 1 to
the first word, and taking that into construction with the
first part of the sentence. I suppose the dialogue to be con
tinued in this verse, which pursues the same iraage of the
allegory, but in the way of metaphor.
9. And if—] xbi, four MSS (two ancient), and LXX.
II. — her boughs] nni^p, MS and Vulg. ; that is, the
boughs of the vineyard, referring still to the subject of the
dialogue above.
The scarcity of fuel, especiaUy wood, in most parts of the
East is so great, that they supply it with every thing capable
of burning; cow dung dried, roots, parings of fruit, withered
stalks of herbs and flowers : see Matt. vi. 28 — 30. Vine-
twigs are particularly mentioned, as used for fuel in dressing
their food, by D'Arvieux; La Roque, Palestine, p. 198.
Ezekiel says, in his parable of the vine, used figuratively for
the people of God, as the vineyard is here, " Shall wood
be taken thereof to do any work ? or wiU men take a pin of
it to hang any vessel thereon ? Behold, it is cast into the fire
for fuel ;" chap. xv. 3, 4. " If a man abide not in me," saith
our Lord, " he is cast forth as a branch [of the vine], and is
withered ; and raen gather thera, and cast them into the fire,
and they are burned ;" John xv. 6. They employed women
and children to gather these things ; and they laid them up
in store for use. The dressing and pruning of their vines
afforded a good supply of the last sort of fuel : but the Pro
phet says, that the vines themselves of the beloved vineyard
shall be blasted, withered, and broken ; and the women shall
corae, and gather them up, and carry away the whole of
thera, to make their fires for domestic uses. See Harmer,
Observ. i. p. 254. &c.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
1, The proud crown — ] " Sebaste, the ancient Samaria,
is situated on a long mount of an oval figure; having first

274 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXVIII.
a fruitful valley, and then a ring of hills running round
about it :" Maundrell, p, 58, " E regione horura ruderura
mons est peraraoenus, planitie admodum frugifera circura-
septus, super quem olira Samaria urbs condita fuit :" Fureri
Itinerarium, p, 93, The city, beautifuUy situated on the top
of a round hill, and surrounded immediately with a rich
vaUey, and a circle of other hills beyond it, suggested the
idea of a chaplet, or wreath of flowers, worn upon their
heads on occasions of festivity; expressed by the proud
crown, and the fading flower of the drunkards. That this
custora of wearing chaplets in their banquets prevailed
among the Jews, as well as among the Greeks and Romans,
appears frora the following passage of the book of Wisdora :
" Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments,
And let no flower of the spring pass by us :
Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds, before they are
withered," Wisd, ii, 7, 8,
2, — the exceedingly strong one] >aixb yirax, fortis Do
mino, i. e. fortissimus, a Hebraism, For laixb, thirty-eight
MSS, and two editions, read ninib,
3, — crowns] I read niiar, plural, to agree with the
verb na Drain, '
4, The early fruit before summer] " No sooner doth
the boccore [the early fig] draw near to perfection, in the
middle or latter end of June, than the kermez, or sumraer
fig, begins to be forraed, though it rarely ripens before Au
gust ; about which tirae the sarae tree frequently throws out
a third crop, or the winter fig, as we may call it. This is
usually of a much longer shape and darker complexion than
the kermez, hanging and ripening upon the tree even after
the leaves are shed ; and, provided the winter "proves mild
and temperate, is gathered as a delicious morsel in the
spring :" Shaw, Travels, p. 370. fol. The image was very
obvious to the inhabitants of Judea and the neighbouring
countries, and is frequently applied by the Prophets to ex
press a desirable object ; by none raore elegantly than by
Hosea, chap. ix. 10.
" Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel ;
Like the first ripe fig in her prime, I saw your fathers."
Ibid. — he plucketh it] For nxii, which with nxm
makes a raiserable tautology, read by a transposition of a
letter nixi ; a happy conjecture of Houbigant. The iraage

Chap. XXVIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 275
expresses in the strongest manner the great ease with which
the Assyrians shall take the city and the whole kingdom,
and the avidity with which they shall seize the rich prey
without resistance.
5. In that day — ] Thus far the prophecy relates to the
Israelites, and manifestly denounces their approaching de
struction by Shalmaneser. Here it turns to the two tribes
of Judah and Benjamin, the remnant of God's people, who
were to continue a kingdom after the final captivity of the
Israelites. It begins with a favourable prognostication of
their affairs under Hezekiah ; but soon changes to reproofs
and threatenings, for their intemperance, disobedience, and
profaneness. 6. — to the gate of the enemy] That is, who pursue the
fleeing enemy even to the very gates of their own city:
" But we were upon them even, unto the entering of the
gate ;" 2 Sara. xi. 23. ; that is, we drove the eneray back to
their own gates : see also 1 Sam. xvii. 52.
9. Whom [say they] would he teach — ] The scoffers
mentioned below, ver. 14. are here introduced as uttering
their sententious speeches : they treat God's method of deal
ing with them, and warning them by his Prophets, with
contempt and derision. What, say they, doth he treat us
as mere infants just weaned? doth he teach us like little
children, perpetually inculcating the same elementary les
sons, the mere rudiments of knowledge ; precept after pre
cept, line after line, here and there, by litde and little ?
imitating at the same time, and ridicuUng, ver. 10. the con
cise prophetical manner. God by his Prophet retorts upon
them, with great severity, their own contemptuous mockery ;
turning it to a sense quite different from what they intended.
Yes, saith he, it shaU be in fact as you say: ye shall be^
taught by a strange tongue, and a stamraering lip; in a
strange country: ye shall be carried into captivity by a
people whose language shaU be unintelligible to you, and
which ye shall be forced to learn like chUdren: and my
deaUng with you shaU be according to your own words ; it
shaU be command upon coramand for your punishraent; it
shall be line upon line, stretched over you to raark out your
destruction ; (compare 2 Kings xxi. 1,3.) : it shaU come upon
you at different times, and by different degrees; till the
iudements with which from time to time I have threatened
you, shall have their fuU accomplishment.

276 NOTES ON ISAIAH. CHAP. XXVIII.
Jerom seems to have rightly understood the general de
sign of this passage, as expressing the manner in which the
scoffers, by their sententious speeches, turned into ridicule
the warnings of God by his Prophets ; though he has not
so well explained the meaning of the repetition of their
speech in the I3th verse. His words are, on ver, 9. " Sole-
bant hoc ex persona Prophetarum ludentes dicere :" and on
ver. 14. " Quod supra diximus, cum irrisione solitos prin-
cipes Judaeorum Prophetis dicere, manda, remanda, et
caetera his simUia, per quae ostenditur, nequaquam eos Pro
phetarum credidisse sermonibus, sed Prophetiara habuisse
despectui, praesens ostendit capitulum, per quod appellantur
viri iUusores :" Hieron. in loc.
And so Jarchi interprets the word Dibirra in the next
verse : " Qui dicunt verba irrisionis parabolice." And the
Chaldee paraphrases the llth verse to the same purpose,
understanding it as spoken not of God, but of the people
deriding his Prophets : " Quoniam in mutatione loquelae et
in lingua subsannationis irridebant contra Prophetas qui
prophetabant populo huic."
12. This is the true rest — ] The sense of this verse is:
God had warned them by his Prophets, that their safety
and security, their deliverance frora their present calaraities,
and frora the apprehensions of still greater approaching,
depended wholly on their trust in God, their faith and obe-
diance ; but they rejected this gracious warning with con
tempt and mockery.
15, — a covenant with death] To be in covenant with,
is a kind of proverbial expression to denote perfect security
from evil and mischief of any sort : —
" For thou shalt be in league with the "stones of the field ;
And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee."
Job V. 23,
" And I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the
field,
And with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things
of the ground," Hos, ii, 18,
That is, none of these shall hurt them. But Lucan, speak
ing of the Psylli, whose peculiar property it was to be un
hurt by the bite of serpents, with which their country
abounded, coraes still nearer to the expression of Isaiah in
this place : —

CH.4P. XXVIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 277
" Gens unica terras
Incolit a saevo serpentum innoxia morsu
Marmaridae Psylli 
Pax illis cum morte data est." Pharsal. ix. 894.
"Of all who scorching Afric's sun endure.
None like the swarthy Psyllians are secure ;
With healing gifl:s and privileges graced,
Well in the land of serpents were they placed :
Truce with the dreadful tyrant death they have,
And border safely on his realm the grave." Rowe.'
18. — shall be broken] For isa, which seems not to
belong to this place, Chald. reads isn ; which is approved
by Houbigant and Secker: see Jer. xxxiii. 21. where the
very same phrase is used. See Prelim. Dissert, p. xxxi.
20. — For the bed is too short — ] A mashal, or prover
bial sayings the meaning of which is, that they will find all
means of defence and protection insufficient to secure thera,
and cover thera from the evils coming upon them. TDia,
chap. xxii. 8. the covering, is used for the outworks of de
fence, the barrier of the country ; and here in the allegori
cal sense it means much the same thing. Their beds were
only mattresses laid on the floor ; and the coverlet, a sheet,
or in the winter a carpet, laid over it, in which the person
wrapt himself. For Daanna, it ought probably to be
oaannra : Houbigant, Secker.
23. Listen ye, and hear my voice — ] The foregoing dis
course, consisting of severe reproofs, and threatenings of
dreadful judgraents irapending on the Jews for their vices,
and their profane conterapt of God's warnings by his mes
sengers, the Prophet concludes with an explanation and de
fence of God's method of dealing with his people in an elcr
gant parable or allegory; in which he employs a variety
of images, all taken from the science of agriculture. As the
husbandman uses various methods in preparing his land, and
adapting it to the several kinds of seed to be sown, with a
due observation of times and seasons ; and, when he hath
gathered in his harvest, employs methods as various in se
parating the corn from the straw and the chaff by different
instruments, according to the nature of the different sorts of
grain: so God, with unerrmg wisdom, and with strict jus
tice, instructs, admonishes, and corrects his people ; chastises
and punishes them in various ways, as the exigence of the
case requires; now more moderately, now more severely;
always tempering justice with mercy; in order to reclaim
y

278 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXVIII.
the wicked, to improve the good ; and finally, to separate
the one from the other.
26. For his God instructeth him] All nations have agreed
in attributing agriculture, the most useful and the most ne
cessary of all sciences, to the invention and to the sugges
tions of their deities. " The Most High hath ordained
husbandry," saith the son of Sirach; Eccl'us vii. 15.
" Namque Ceres fertur fruges, Liherque liquoris
Vitigeni laticem mortalibus instituisse." Lucretius, v. 14.
'O 0 ¦tlTflOS XydpUTtOKTI
Ae|i«i (rnfixiyu, ?\xov; §' i3-( i^yoy iyii^il
Mif.ivn'-xay jitoroto' Myn J' ots /BaiAo; Ǥirii
Boutr; n XXl f««xsAt)5-(- Asysi S' on ^i%i»i a^xi
Kxi <pur» yu^dia-xi, xxi (rm^ftxrx irxyrx fixMnixi. AratUS, Phsen. 5.
He (Jupiter) to the human race
Indulgent, prompts to necessary toil
Man provident of life ; with kindly signs
The seasons marks, when best to turn the glebe
With spade and plough, to nurse the tender plant.
And cast o'er fostering earth the seeds abroad.
27, 28. Four methods of threshing are here mentioned, by
different instruments ; the flail, the drag, the wain, and the
treading of the cattle. The staff, or flaU, was used for the
irifirmiora semina, says Hieron. the grain that was too tender
to be treated in the other methods. The drag consisted of
a sort of frame of strong planks, made rough at the bottom
with hard stones or iron : it was drawn by horses or oxen over
the corn-sheaves spread on the floor, the driver sitting upon
it. Kempfer has given a print representing the mannei- of
using this instrument : Amoen. Exot. p. 682, fig. 3. The
wain was much like the forraer, but had wheels with iron
teeth or edges like a saw. " Ferrata carpenta rotis per me
dium in serrarura modum se Volventibus :" Hieron. in loc. ;
by which it should seem that the axle was armed with iron
teeth, or serrated wheels, throughout. See a description
and print of such a machine used at present in Egypt for
the same purpose ; it moves upon three roUers armed with
iron teeth or wheels, to cut the straw ; in Niebuhr's Voyage
en Arable, tab. xvu. p. 123. In Syria they make use of the
drag, constructed in the very same raanner as above de
scribed : Niebuhr, Description de I'Arabie, p. 140. This
not only forced out the grain, but cut the straw in pieces
for fodder for the catde ; for in the eastern countries they

Chap. XXVIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 279
have no hay. See Harmer's Observ. i. p. 425. The last
rnethod is weU known from the law of Moses, which " for
bids the ox to be muzzled, when he treadeth out the corn ;"
Deut. xxv. 4.
28. — but the bread-corn — ] I read Dnbi, on the autho
rity of Vulg. and Symmachus: the former expresses the
conjunction 1, omitted in the text, by autem ; the latter by
Ibid. — hoofs — ] For iiii?ib, horsemen, read VDis, hoofs:
so Syr. Sym. Theod. Vulg.

CHAPTER XXIX.
The subject of this and the four following chapters is the
invasion of Senacherib ; the great distress of the Jews whUe
it continued ; their sudden and unexpected deliverance by
God's immediate interposition in their favour; the subse
quent prosperous state of the kingdom under Hezekiah ; —
interspersed with severe reproofs, and threats of punishment,
for their hypocrisy, stupidity, infidelity, their want of trust
in God, and their vain reliance on the assistance of Egypt ;
and with promises of better tiraes, both imraediately to suc
ceed, and to be expected in iJie future age. The whole
making not one continued discourse, but rather a collection
of different discourses upon the same subject; which is treat
ed with great elegance and variety : though the matter is
various, and the transitions sudden, yet the Prophet seldom
goes far from his subject. It is properly enough divided by
die chapters in the coramon translation.
1. Ariel — ] That Jerusalem is here called by this name
is very certain ; but the reason of this name, and the mean
ing of it as applied to Jerusalem, is very obscure and doubt
ful. Some, with the Chaldee, suppose it to be taken from
the hearth of the great altar of burnt-offerings, which Ezekiel
plainly caUs by the sarae name; and that Jerusalem is here
considered as the seat of die fire of God, bx iix, which
should issue from thence to consume his enemies : Compare
chap. xxxi. 9. Some, according to the common derivation
of the word, bx iix, the lion of God, or the strong Uon,
suppose it to signify the strength of the place, by which it
was enabled to resist and overcome aU its enemies. Tas? h
(fiXTi rvty -rroXn ovrui ti^-/i<r6xi- i-jrii, ^ix &iov, Aeovms ^'xfty io-vx^xrli rovi

2S0 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXIX.
avrxig^oyrxi : Procop. in loc. There are other explanations of
this name given, but none that seems to be perfectly satis
factory. Ibid. Add year to year — ] IronicaUy : Go on year after
year; keep your solemn feasts: yet know, that God will
punish you for your hypocritical worship, consisting of raere
form destitute of true piety. Probably delivered at the time
of some great feast, when they were thus employed.
2. — mourning and sorrow — ] Instead of your present
joy and festivity.
Ibid. — as the hearth of the great altar — ] That is, it
shall be the seat of the fire of God ; which shall issue from
thence to consume his enemies. See note on ver. 1. Or,
perhaps, all on flame, as it was when taken by the Chal
deans ; or covered with carcasses and blood, as when taken
by the Romans : an intimation of which more distant events,
though not immediate subjects of the prophecy, may per
haps be given in this obscure passage.
3. — like David] For ina read ma ; so LXX, and two
MSS, and f. two more.
Ibid. — towers — ] For nii^Jra read nnasra ; so LXX,
and five MSS, one of them ancient.
4. — a feeble speech] That the souls of the dead uttered
a feeble stridulous sound, very different from the natural
human voice, was a popular notion among the heathens as
well as among the Jews. This appears from several pas
sages of their poets; Homer, Virgil, Horace. The pre
tenders to the art of necromancy, who were chiefly women,
had an art of speaking with a feigned voice ; so as to deceive
those who applied to them, by making them believe that it
was the voice of the ghost. They had a way of uttei-ing
sounds, as if they were formed, not by the organs of speech,
but deep in the chest, or in the belly; and were thence
called ly^x^g^i^uhi, ventriloqui : they could make the voice
seem to corae frora beneath the ground, frora a distant part,
in another direction, and not from themselves, the better to
impose upon those who consulted them. eIeottjiSs; t« ysms
rovro TOl/ xftva^oy n^ov iTirviaivoyrxt, iyx oix rriv xtrxlpuxv rn; (pmti; roy rou
¦if/ivSo-j; x7roh^^x<rxu(riy iXiy^oy : Psellus de Daemonibus, apud
Bochart. i. p, 731, " These people studiously acquire, and
affect on purpose, this sort of obscure sound, that by the
uncertainty ot the voice they raay the better escape being
detected in the cheat." From these arts of the necroraaiiT

Chap. XXIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 281
cers, the popular notion seeras to have arisen, that the ghost's
voice was a weak, stridulous, almost inarticulate sort of
sound, very different from the speech of the living,
5, —the proud — ] For Tiir, thy strangers, read Dnr, the
proud, LXX; parallel and synonymous to DiiJiir, the ter
rible, in the next line : the i was at first 1 in a MS, See
note on xxv, 2,
5 — 7, But the multitude of the proud — ] These verses
contain an admirable description of the destruction of Se
nacherib's army, with a beautiful variety of the raost expres
sive and sublirae images; perhaps more adapted to shew
the greatness, the suddenness, and horror, of the event,
than the means and manner by which it was effected. Cora
pare chap, xxx. 30 — 33.
7. — like as a dream — ] This is the beginning' of the
comparison, which is pursued and applied in the next verse.
Senacherib and his mighty array are not compared to a
dream, because of their sudden disappearance ; but the dis
appointment of their eager hopes is compared to what hap
pens to a hungry and thirsty man, when he awakes from a
dream in which fancy had presented to him meat and drink
in abundance, and finds it nothing but a vain illusion.
The comparison is elegant and beautiful in the highest de
gree, well wrought up, and perfectly suited to the end pro
posed : the image is extreraely natural, but not obvious ; it
appeals to our inward feelings, not to our outward senses;
and is applied to an event in its concomitant circumstances
exactly sirailar, but in its nature totaUy different. See De
S. Poes. Hebr, Praelect, xii. For beauty and ingenuity it
may fairly corae in corapetition with one of the raost elegant
of Virgil, (greatly iraproved from Homer, Iliad xxii, 199,),
where he has applied to a different purpose, but not so hap
pUy, the same image of the ineffectual working of imagina
tion in a dream : —
" Ac veluti in somnls oculos ubi languida pressit
Nocte quies, necquicquam avidos extendere cursus
Velle videmur, et in mediis conatibus aegri
Succidimus ; non lingua valet, non corpore notse
Sufficiunt vires, nee vox, aut verba sequuntur," Mn. xii, 908,
" And as, when slumber seals the closing sight,
The sick wild fancy labours in the night ;
Some dreadful visionary foe we shun
With airy strides, but strive in vain to run ;

-282 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXIX.
In vain our baffled limbs their powers essay ;
We faint, we struggle, sink, and fall away ;
Drain'd of our strength, we neither fight nor fly.
And on the tongue the struggfing accents die." Pitt.
Lucretius expresses the very same image vrith Isaiah : —
" Ac veluti in somnis sitiens quum quaerit, et humor
Non datur, ardorem in membris qui stinguere possit :
Sed laticum simulacbra petit, frustraque laborat,
In medioque sitit torrenti flumine potans." iv. 1091.
Ibid. — their armies and their towers] For nmsrai nias,
I read with the Chald. Dmsrai Dxas.
9, They are drunken, but not with wine.] See note on
chap. Ii. 21.
11. I cannot read it — ] An ancient MS and LXX have
preserved a word here, lost out of the text, niipb, (for
nxipb), ayxyymxi.
13. Jehovah — ] For laix, sixty-three MSS and three
editions read nini, and five MSS add nini.
Ibid. And vain — ] I read, for inni, mm with LXX,
Matt. XV. 9. Mark vii. 7. ; and for mrabra, Dnrabra with
Chald. 17. Ere Lebanon beeotne like Carmel — ] A mashal, or
proverbial saying, expressing any great revolution of things ;
and, when respecting two subjects, an entire reciprocal
change : explained here by some interpreters, I think with
great probability, as having its principal view beyond the
revolutions then near at hand ; to the rejection of the Jews,
and the calling of the Gentiles. The first were the vine
yard of God, bx Dia, (if the Prophet, who loves an allu
sion to words of like sounds, may be supposed to have
intended one here), cultivated and watered by him in vain,
to be given up, and to become a wUderness : compare chap.
V. I — 7. The last had been hitherto barren, but were, by
the grace of God, to be rendered fniitful. See Matt. xxi.
43. Rom. xi. 30, 31. Carmel stands here opposed to Le
banon, and therefore is to be taken as a proper name.
21. — that pleaded in the gate] " They are heard by
the treasurer, master of the horse, and other principal offi
cers of the regency [of Algiers], who sit constantly in the
gate of the palace for that purpose ;" [that is, the distribu
tion of justice] : Shaw's Travels, p. 315. fol. He adds, in
the note, " That we read of the elders in the gate, Deut,
xxii. 15. xxv, 7,; and Isa, xxix. 21. Amos v. 10. of him

Chap. XXIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. ' 283
that reproveth and rebuketh in the gate. The Ottoman
Court likewise seems to have been called the Port, from the
distribution of justice, and the dispatch of pubUc business,
that is carried on in the gates of it."
22. — the God of the house of Jacob.] I read bx as a
noun, not a preposition : the parallel line favours this sense ;
and there is no address to the house of Jacob, to justify the
other. Ibid. — covered with confusion] " inns Chald. ut «
IftirxixMi], Theod. s»Tg«a-no-£T«i, Syr. iisna, videtur legendum
lisni : hie enim solum legitur verbum iin, nee in Unguis
affinibus habet pudoris significationem :" Secker.
23. When his children shall see — ] For inxia, I read
nxia, with LXX and Syr.

CHAPTER XXX.
1. Who ratify covenants — ] Heb. " Who pour out a
libation." Sacrifice and libation were ceremonies constant
ly used, in ancient times, by most nations, in the ratifying
of covenants : a libation therefore is used for a covenant, as
in Greek the word a-Tcoyhn, for the same reason, stands for
both. This seems to be the most easy explication of the
Hebrew phrase ; and it has the authority of the LXX,
iTTOiYirxTi trvyinxx;.
4, — at Hanes] Six MSS, and perhaps six others, read
Dan, in vain, for Dan, Hanes; and so also LXX, who read
likewise iras laboured, for irias arrived at,
5, — were ashamed — ] Eight MSS (one ancient) read
I2?ian without x. So Chald, and Vulg,
Ibid, But proved — ] Four MSS (three ancient) after
ia add dx, which seems wanted to complete the phrase in
its usual forra.
6. The burthen — ] xii?ra seems here to be taken in its
proper sense ; the load, not the oracle. The sarae subject
is continued; and there seeras to be no place here for a
new title to a distinct prophecy.
Ibid. — a land of distress — ] The same deserts are here
spoken of, which the Israelites passed through when they
came out of Egypt ; which Moses describes, Deut. viii. 15.
as " that great and terrible wUderness, wherein were fiery
seipents, and scorpions, and drought ; where there was no

284 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXX.
water." And which was designed to be a kind of barrier
between thera and Egypt, of which the Lord had said, " Ye
shaU henceforth return no more that way;" Deut, xrii, 16,
6, — will not profit them] A MS adds in the margin the
word irab, which seems to have been lost out of the text: it
is authorized by LXX and Vulg,
7, Rahab the Inactive] The two last words, nail? on,
joined into one, make the participle pihel, naii?r3n, I find,
that the learned professor Doederlein, in his version of
Isaiah, and note on this place, has given the same conjec
ture ; which he speaks of as having been formerly published
by him, A concurrence of different persons in the same
conjecture, adds to it a greater degree of probability,
8, For a testimony] irb, so Syr, Chald, Vulg, and
LXX, in MSS Pachom, and i, D, ii, m fix(lv^ioy; which two
words have been lost out of the other copies of LXX,
12, — in obliquity] 1i?pra, transposing the two last letters
of piyra, -in oppression, which seems not to belong to this
place : a very probable conjecture of Houbigant,
13, — a swelling in a high wall] It has been observed
before, that the buildings in Asia generally consist of little
better than what we call mud-walls, " All the houses at
Ispahan," says Thevenot, vohii, p, 159, "are buUt of bricks
made of clay and straw, and dried in the sun ; and covered
with a plaster raade of a fine white stone. In other places
in Persia, the "houses are built with nothing- else but such
bricks, made with tempered clay and chopped straw, well
raingled together, and dried in the sun, and then used ; but
the least rain dissolves thera," Sir John Chardin's MS
reraark on this place of Isaiah is very apposite: " Murs en
Asie etant faits de terre se fendent ainsi par milieu et de
haut en bas," This shews clearly how obvious and expres
sive the image is. The Psalmist has in the sarae raanner
made use of it, to express sudden and utter destruction :
" Ye shall be slain all of you ;
[Ye shall be] like an inclining wall, like a shattered fence,"
Psal, Ixii, 4,
14, — and spareth it not] Five MSS add the conjunc
tion 1 to the negative; xbi,
17. — ten thousand — ] In the second line of this verse
a word is manifestly omitted, which should answer to one
thousand in the first : LXX supply Ttoxxoi, Dial. But the
true word is naai ; as, I am persuaded, any one wiU be

Chap. xxx. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 285
convinced, who will compare the foUowing passages with
this place :
" How should one chase a thousand ;
And two put ten thousand [naai] to flight ?"
Deut. xxxii. 30.
" And five of you shall chase a hundred ;
And a hundred of you shall chase [naai] ten thousand.",
Lev. xxvi. 8.
18. — shall he expect in silence] For Dili, Jie shall be
exalted, which belongs not to this place, Houbigant reads
Dill, }ie shall be silent .- and so it seems to be in a MS.
Another MS instead of it reads ani?i, he shall return. The
mistakes occasioned by the sirailitude of the letters i and i
are very frequent, as the reader raay have" already observed.
19. When a holy people — ] Aao; ayio;, LXX, lynp Dr.
The word ii?np, lost out of the text, but happily supplied
by LXX, clears up the sense, otherwise extreraely obscure.
Ibid. — shalt implore him with weeping'^ The negative
particle xb is not acknowledged by LXX. It may perhaps
have been written by mistake for lb, of which there are
many examples.
20. Though Jehovah — ] For laix, sixteen MSS and
three editions have nins
21. — to the right, or to the left] Syr. Chald. Vulg.
translate as if, instead of iai — ia, they read xbi — xb.
22. And ye shall treat — ] The very prohibition of Mo
ses, Deut. vii. 25. only thrown out of the prose into the
poetical form. " The graven images of their gods ye shall
burn with fire : thou .shalt not desire the silver or the gold
that is on them ; nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared
therein ; for it is an aboraination to Jehovah thy God."
25, — the mighty — ] Dibiara, fityxXov;, Syra. fnyxXvyofnyov;,
Aquila; paiai, Chald,
26, —shall be sevenfold] The text adds, nran? iixa
Dirain, " as the light of seven days;" a manifest gloss, taken
in fi-ora the raargin : it is not in most of the copies of LXX ;
it interrupts the rhythmical construction, and obscures the
sense by a false, or at least an unnecessary, inteipretation,
27.  the flame — ] nxwra ; this word seems to be rightly
rendered in our translation, the fame, Judg, xx, 38, 40,
&c,; a sign otjre, Jer, vi, 1, called properly nxii?.ra, an ele
vation, frora its tending upwards,
28,  to toss the nations with the van of perdition] The

286 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXX.
word ns3nb is in its form very irregular. Kimchi says it is
for ^lanb. Houbigant supposes it to be a mistake, and shews
the cause of it ; the joining it to the n, which should begin
the following word. The true reading.is Diian *)ianb.
The Vulgate seems to be the only one of the ancient in
terpreters who has explained rightly the sense ; but he has
dropped the image: " ad perdendas gentes in nihilura."
Kimchi's explanation is to the following effect: " nsa is
a van with which they winnow corn; and its use is to
cleanse the corn from the chaff and straw : but the van, with
which God will winnow the nations, will be the van of emp
tiness, or perdition ; for nothing useful shall remain behind,
but all shall come to nothing, and perish. In like manner,
a bridle is designed to guide the horse in the right way ; but
the bridle which God will put in the jaws of the people,
shall not direct thera aright, but shall make them err, and
lead them into destruction." This latter image the Prophet
has applied to the same subject afterward, chap, xxxvii. 29.
" I will put my bridle in thy jaws,
•And turn thee back by the way in which thou camest.''
And as to the former it is to be observed, that the van of
the ancients was a large instrument, soraewhat like a shovel,
with a long handle, with which they tossed the corn raixed
with the chaff and chopped straw into the air, that the wind
raight separate them. See Hararaond on Matt. iii. 12.
31. He, that was — ] " Post iiii?x forte excidit iwx :"
Secker.
32. — the rod of correction] For moira, the grounded
staff, of which no one yet has been able to raake any tolera
ble sense, Le Clerc conjectured niDira, of correction ; see
Prov. xxii, 15. ; and so it is in two MSS (one of thera an
cient), and seeras to be so in the Bodley MS. Syr. has
mariwi, virga domans, vel subjectionis.
Ibid. — against them] For na, fifty-two MSS and five
editions read Da.
Ibid. — with tabrets and harps] With every demonstra
tion, of joy and thanksgiving for the destruction of the eneray
in so wonderful a raanner : with hymns of praise, accom
panied with musical instruments. See ver. 29.
33. For Tophet is ordained — ] Tophet is a valley very
near to Jeirusalem, to the south-east, called also the vall^ of
Hinnom, or Gehenna ; where the Canaanites, and afterwards
the Israelites, sacrificed their children, by raaking thera pass

Chap. XXX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 287
through the fire — that is, by burning them in the fire — to
Moloch. It is therefore used for a place of punishment by
fire ; and by our blessed Saviour in the gospel for hell-fire ;
as the Jews themselves had applied it. See Chald. on Isa.
xxxiii. 14. where Dbr ilpira is rendered " the Gehenna of
everlasting fire." Here the place where the Assyrian army
was destroyed is called Tophet by a metonyray ; for the As
syrian army was destroyed probably at a greater distance
from Jerusalem, and quite on the opposite side of it : for
Nob is mentioned as the last station from which the king
of Assyria should threaten Jerusalem, chap. x. 32. where
the Prophet seems to have given a very exact chorographical
description of his march in order to attack the city.

CHAPTER XXXI.
I. Who trust—] For bri, l""", twenty MSS, and LXX
and Vulg. read br, without the conjunction,
2, — his word] iiai, singular, without i ; MS and LXX,
and Targ, Hieros,
4, Like as the lion — ] This comparison is exactly in the
spirit and manner, and very nearly approaching to the ex
pression, of Homer: —
Bn f (ft£», «5"E ^sav o^io-ir^oipo;, oy iTriSivvi;
Aiipoy iy\ xpeiuy, xiXzrxi oi I B-vf^o; xyyjva^,
M))Aia» 7t^6ri<royrx, kxi h -rrvxiyoy dofioy iX$eiy
EiTTtp yxp }i' ii/00-i 7tx^ xvropi ^urogx; xye^x;
'Zvy xvo-i XXl Sy^s<ra-i <pvha{r(royrx; tti^i fi-/i>^x,
Ovfx r <»ir«j>iTo; fiiftoyi ^x6fioto diiT0xi'
A>i\' oy u^ r, i^-rrx^i fiirxXfiiyo;, us xxi at/To;
e£ph)t' ev TT^aToio-i Sans x^o x^i'f xxoin. Iliad, xn. 299.
As the bold lion, mountain-bred, now long
Famish'd, with courage and with hunger stung,
Attempts the thronged fold : him nought appals.
Though dogs and armed shepherds stand in guard
Collected ; he nathless undaunted springs
O'er the high fence, and rends the trembling prey ;
Or rushing onward in his breast receives
The well-aimed spear.
Of metaphors, allegories, and comparisons of the Hebrew
poets in which the divine nature and attributes are repre
sented under images taken from brutes and other low ob-

288 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXI.
jects; of their effect, their sublimity, and the cause of it;
see De S. Poes. Hebr. Pralect. xvi. sub fin.
5. leaping forward — ] The generality of interpreters
observe, in this place, an allusion to the deUverance which
God vouchsafed to his people, when he destroyed the first
born of the Egj'ptians, and exempted those of the Israelites
sojourning among them by a peculiar interposition. The
same word is made use of here which is used upon that oc
casion, and which gave the name to the feast which was
instituted in comraeraoration of that deliverance; nos.
But the difficulty is, to reconcile the commonly received
meaning of that word with the circumstances of the siraili
tude here used to illustrate the deUverance represented as
parallel to the deliverance in Egypt.
" As the mother-birds hovering over their young ;
So shall Jehovah God of Hosts protect Jerusalem,
Protecting and delivering, passing over, and rescuing her."
This difficulty is, I think, well solved by Vitringa;
whose reraark is the raore worthy of observation, as it leads
to the true meaning of an important word, which hitherto
seeras greatly to have been misunderstood ; though Vitringa
himself^ as it appears to me, has not exactly enough defined
the precise meaning of it. He says, " nos signifies to
cover, to protect by covering ; trx.i-nxiru uft«;, LXX ; Jeho
vah obieget ostium :" whereas it means that particular action
or motion, by which God at that time placed himself in
such a situation as to protect the house of the Israelite
against the destroying angel — to spring forward, to throw
one's self in the way, in order to cover and protect. Coc
ceius comes nearer to the true meaning than Vitringa, by
rendering it gradumfacere, to march, to step forward : Lexi
con in V. The common raeaning of the word nos upon
other occasions is to halt, to be lame, to leap as in a rude
manner of dancing, (as the prophets of Baal did, 1 Kings
xviii. 26.) ; all which agrees very well together ; for the motion
of a larae person is a perpetual springing forward, by throw
ing hiraself frora the weaker upon the stronger leg. The
coraraon notion of God's passing over the houses of the Is
raelites is, that in going through the land of Egypt to sraite
the first-born, seeing the blood on the door of the houses of
the Israelites, he passed over, or skipped, those houses, and
forbore to sraite thera. But that this is not the true notion
of the thing, will be plain from considering the words of the

Chap. XXXI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 289
sacred historian ; where he describes very explicitly the ac
tion : " For Jehovah will pass through, to sraite the Egyp
tians ; and when he seeth the blood on the lintels and on
the two side-posts, Jehovah will spring forward over (or
before) the door, nnsn br mni nosi, and wUl not suffer
the destroyer to corae into your houses to smite you ,-"
Exod. xii. 23. Here are manifestly two distinct agents,
with which the notion of passing over is not consistent; for
that supposes but one agent : The two agents are the de
stroying angel passing through to smite every house ; and
Jehovah the protector, keeping pace with hira ; and who,
seeing the door of the Israelite raarked with the blood, the
token prescribed, leaps forward, throws himself with a sud
den motion in the way, opposes the destroying angel ; and
covers and protects that house against the destroying angel,
nor suffers hira to sraite it. In this way of considering the
action, the beautiful similitude of the bird protecting her
young, answers exactly to the application by the allusion to
the deliverance in Egypt : As the mother-bird spreads her
wings to cover her young, throws herself before them, and
opposes the rapacious bird that assaults them ; so shall Je
hovah protect, as with a shield, Jerusalem from the enemy,
protecting and delivering, springing forward and rescuing
her ; v-ni^Zxiyay, as the three other Greek interpreters, Aquila,
Symraachus, and Theodotion, render it : LXX, Tn^iTroiYio-irxi ;
instead of which, MS Pachora. has m^i^nnrxi, circumeundo
proteget, which I think is the true reading. Horaer (Ii,
viii, 331,) expresses the very sarae iraage by this word; —
AXXx B-ioiy ?r£g(£-<, xxi ol irxxo; Xfo!pixxXv-ipi :
 " But Ajax his broad shield display'd,
And screen'd his brother with a mighty shade," Pope,
 'O; Xguriiv xfotpi^iitixx;. II, I. 37,
Which the Scholiast explains by m^i<^i^yixxs, l-rr^f^xx.u';.
6, ye have so deeply — ] All tlie ancient versions read
Ipirarn, in the second person,
7, The sin, which their own hands have made] The con
struction of the word xan, sin, in this place is not easy.
The LXX have omitted it ; MSS Pachom. and i, D, ii, and
Cod, Marchal, in margine, supply the omission by the word
xfix^rixv, or xfixe^TYifix, said to be from Aquila's version;
which I have foUowed. The learned professor Schroeder,
Instilut. Ling. Hebr. p. 298. makes it to be in regimine widi

290 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXI,
Dani, as an epithet; your sinful hands. The LXX render
the pronoun in the third person, «< x"i^ xvrm -, and an an
cient MS has, agreeably to that rendering, Dnb, for Dab;
which word they have likewise oraitted, as not necessary lo
complete the sense.

CHAPTER XXXII,
1, And princes — ] Din2?i, without b; so the ancient
versions. An ancient MS has iiiii?l, and his princes,
2, As the shadam of a great rock] The shadow of a
great projecting rock is the most refreshing that is possible
in a hot country ; not only as most perfectly excluding the
rays of the sun, but also having in itself a natural coolness,
which it reflects and communicates to every thing about it,
" Speluncaeque tegant, et saxea procubet umbra,"
Virg, Georg, iii, 145,
" Let the cool cave and shady rock protect them,"
Eh-S( xi^xXtiy XXl youvzTse Xn^io; x^ii,
At«»PiS05 5e TS x^o); xvo xxvfixro;' aXXx tot' hSd
EiJi 5r£T^«<i) n o-xiY), xxi EiSaivo; oiyo;. Hesiod, ii, 206,
When Sirius rages, and thine aching head,
Parch'd skin, and feeble knees, refreshment need ;
Then to the rock's projected shade retire.
With Biblin wine recruit thy wasted powers,
3, And him the eyes] For xbi Le Clerc reads lbi ; of
which njistake the Masoretes acknowledge there are fifteen
instances ; and many more are reckoned by others. The
removal of the negative restores to the verb its true and
usual sense.
6, The fool will still utter folly] A sort of proverbial
saying; which Euripides (Bacchae, 369,) has expressed in
the very same manner and words : fta^x yx^ (la^og Xtyn. Of
this kind of simple and unadorned proverb or parable, see
De S, Poes, Hebr, Praelect. xxiv.
Ibid. Against Jehovah] For bx, two MSS read br,
more properly.
7. As for the niggard his instruments — ] His machi
nations, his designs. The paronomasia, which the Prophet
frequently deals in, suggested this expression: vba ibai.
The first word is expressed with some variety in the MSS :
seven MSS read ibiai, one bai, another ibiai.

Chap. XXXII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 291
Ibid. And to defeat the assertions — ] A word seems to
have been lost here, and two others to have suffered a small
alteration ; which has raade the sentence very obscure. The
LXX have happily retained the rendering of the lost word,
and restored the sentence in all its parts : xxi iixo-xs^xe-xi xo-
yous rx-miym iy xfirii- Bsiuraa piax iiai isnbi. They frequent
ly render the verb isn by 3(«i!-xsS«5-«<. A MS reads laibi ;
which gives authority for the preposition b necessary to the
sense; and LXX, Syr. Chald. read I3su?raa.
8. Atid he by his generous — ] " Of the four sorts of per
sons mentioned ver. 5. three are described, ver. 6, 7, and 8.
but not the fourth :" Secker. Perhaps for xini we ought
to read nwi.
11. gird the sackcloth — ] pil?, sackcloth, a word neces-
.sary to the sense, is here lost, but preserved by LXX, MSS
Alex, and Pachom; and i. D. ii. and Edit. Aid. and Comp.
and Arab, and Syr.
Ibid. Tremble — be disquieted — strip ye — ] nrai, nau?S,
&c. These are infinitives, with a paragogic n, according
to Schultens, Institut. Ling. Hebr. p, 453, and are to be
taken in an imperative sense,
12, Mourn ye for the pleasant field] The LXX, Syr,
and Vulg, read USD, mourn ye, imperative: twelve MSS
(five ancient), two editions, LXX, Aquila, Syra, Theod,
Syi-. Vulg. all read n^yu, field; not ilii;, breasts.
13. — And the brier shall come up] AU the ancient ver
sions read iiraii?i, with the conjunction. And an ancient
MS has ia nbrn, which seeras to be right; or rather na :
and there is a rasure in the place of ia in another ancient MS.
Ibid. Yea over all — ] For ia, the ancient versions, ex
cept Vulg. seera to have read i. ia raay perhaps be a mis
take for ia or na above-mentioned. It is not necessary in
this place.
13 — 18. Over the land of my people — ] This description
of impending distress belongs to other times than that of
Senacherib's invasion, from which they were so soon de
livered. It must at least extend to the ruin of the country
and city by the Chaldeans. And the proraise of blessings,
which foUows, was not fulfiUed under the Mosaic dispensa
tion ; they belong to the kingdora of Messiah. Corapare
ver. 15. with chap. xxix. 17. and see the note there.
14. Ophel] It was a part of Mount S_ion, rising higher
than the rest; at the eastern extreraity, near to the teraple,

292 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXII.
a little to the south of it ; called by Micah, iv. 8. " Ophel of
the daughter of Sion." It was naturally strong by its situa
tion, and had a wall of its own, by which it was separated
from the rest of Sion.
15. And the fruitful field] braiani, fifteen MjSS (six
ancient), and two editions ; which seems to make the noun
an appellative.
19. The city shall be laid level with the plain] For
nbswai, Syr. reads nbBii?ai. The city, probably Nineveh,
or Babylon : but this verse is very obscure. " Saltus ; As-
syriorura regnura : civitas ; magnifica Assyriorura castra :"
Ephreem. Syr. in loc. For iiai, a MS has llii ; and so
conjectured Archbishop Secker, referring to Zech. xi. 2.
20. who sow your seed in every watery place] Sir John
Chardin's note on this place is : " This exactly answers the
manner of planting rice ; for they sow it upon the water :
and before sowing, while the earth is covered with water,
they cause the ground to be trodden by oxen, horses, and
asses, who go mid-leg deep ; and this is the way of prepar
ing the ground for sowing. As they sow the rice on the
water, they transplant it in the water :" Harraer's Observ.
i. p. 280. " Rice is the food of two-thirds of mankind :"
Dr Arbuthnot. " It is cultivated in raost of the eastern
countries :" MUler. " It is good for all, and at all tiraes :"
Sir J. Chardin, ibid. " La ris, qui est leur principal aliment
et leur froment (i. e. des Siaraois), n'est jamais assez arrose;
il croit au milieu de I'eau, et les campagnes oii on le cultive
ressemblent plutot a de raarets que non pas a des terres
qu'on laboure avec la charue. Le ris a bien cette force, que
quoy qu'il y ait six ou sept pieds d'eau sur lui, il pousse
toujours sa tige au dessus, et le tuyau qui le porte s'eleve et
croit a proportion de la hauteur de I'eau qui noye son
charap :" Voyage de I'Eveque de Beryte, p. 144. ; Paris,
1666.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The plan of the prophecy, continued in this chapter, and
which is manifestly distinct frora the foregoing, is peculiarly
elegant. To set it in a proper light, it will be necessary to
mark the transitions from one part of it to another.
In ver. 1. the Prophet addresses hiraself to Senacherib,
briefly, but strongly and elegantly, expressing the injustice

Chap. XXXIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 293
of his ambitious designs, and the sudden disappointment of
them. Ver. 2. the Jews are introduced offering up their earnest
supplications to God In their present distressful condition ;
with expressions of their trust and confidence in his pro
tection. Ver. 3. and 4. the Prophet, in the name of God, or ra
ther God himself, is introduced addressing hiraself to Sena
cherib, and threatening him, that notwithstanding the terror
which he had occasioned in the invaded countries, yet he
should faU, and become an easy prey to those whom lie had
intended to subdue.
Ver. 5. and 6. a chorus of Jews is introduced, acknow
ledging the mercy and power of God, who had undertaken
to protect them ; extolling it with direct opposition to the
boasted power of their eneraies; and celebrating the wis
dora and piety of their king Hezekiah, who had placed his
confidence in the favour of God.
Then foUows, ver. 7 — 9. a description of the distress and
despair of the Jews, upon the king of Assyria's raarching
against Jerusalera, and sending his suraraons to thera to
surrender, after the treaty he had made with Hezekiah on
the conditions of his paying, as he actually did pay to him,
three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold ;
2 Kings xvUi. 14 — 16.
Ver. 10. God hiraself is again introduced, declaring that
he will interpose in this critical situation of affairs, and dis
appoint the vain designs of the eneraies of his people, by
discorafiting and utterly consuming thera.
Then follows, ver. 11 — 22. still in the person of God,
(which however falls at last into that of the Prophet), a
description of the dreadful apprehensions of the wicked in
those tiraes of distress and iraminent danger; finely con
trasted with the confidence and security of the righteous,
and their trust in the promises of God, that he will be their
never-faiUng strength and protector.
The whole concludes, in the person of the Prophet, with
a description of the security of the Jews under the protec
tion of God, and of the wretched state of Senacherib and
his array, wholly discomfited, and exposed to be plundered
even by the weakest of the enemy.
Much of the beauty of this passage depends on ' the ex
planation above given of ver. 3. and 4. as addressed by the
z

-294 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXIII.
Prophet, or by God himself, to Senacherib; not, as it is usually
taken, as addressed by the Jews to God, ver. 3. and then, ver.
4. as addressed to the Assyrians, To set -this in a clear light,
it may be of use to compare it vrith a passage of the Prophet
Joel; where, speaking of the destruction caused by the locusts,
he sets in the same strong light of opposition, as Isaiah does
Iiere, the power of the enemy, and the power of Jehovah who
would destroy that enemy. Thus Isaiah, to Senacherib ;
" When thou didst raise thyself up, the nations were dispersed. ver. 3.
" But now will I arise, saith Jehovah ;
Now will I be exalted." . ver. 10.
And thus Joel, ii. 20, 21.
" His stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall ascend ;
Though he hath done great things.
Fear not, O land, be glad- and rejoice;
For Jehovah will do great things."
1. thou plunderer — ] See note on chap. xxi. 2.
Ibid. — when thou art weary — ] " Tnbaa, alibi non
extat in s. s. nisi f. Job xv. 29. — simplicius est legere
"{nbaa. Vid. Capell. nee repugnat Vitringa. Vid. Dan. ix.
24. nba, Dinn :" Seckek.
2. our streiigth — ] For Drir, Syr. Chald. Vulg. read
larir, in the first person of the pronoun, not the third: the
edition of Felix Pratensis has lainrir in the margin.
3.. From thy terrible voice — ] For ^Vran, LXX and
Syr. read Tirax ; whom I follow.
6. — thy treasure — ] O d-wxu^o; irov, Sym. He had in
his copy ^12JX, not >isx.
7. — the mighty men raise a grievous cry] Three MSS
read Dibxix ; that is, lions of God, or strong lions : so they
called valiant men, heroes ; which appellation the Arabians
and Persians still use. See Bochart. Hieroz, Part I. lib.
iii. cap. 1. " Mahomet ayant reconnu Hamzeh son oncle
pour homme de courage et de valeur, lui donne le litre ou
surnom d' Assad Allan, qui signifie, le Lion de Dieu :"
D'Herbelot, p. 427. And for nan, Syr. and Chald. read
nifp; whom I follow. Chald. Syr. Aquila, Sym. and
Theod. read Dnb nxix, or nxii ; with what meaning, is
not clear.
9. — are stripped — ] LXX, (pxytix iTxr they read mrai-
11. And my spirit — ] " For oanii, read iraa inii :"

Chap. XXXIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 295
Secker. Which reading is confirmed by Chald. where
iiraira, my word, answers to inii, my spirit.
15. — the proposal of bloodshed] A MS reads Diraia.
18; Where is he that numbered the towers ?] That is,
the commander of the ,enemy's forces, who surveyed the
fortifications of the city, and took an account of the height,
strength, and situation of the walls and towers, that he^
might .know where to raake the assault with the greatest ad
vantage; as Capaneus before Thebes is represented in a
passage of the Phoenissffi of Euripides, which Grotius has
applied as an illustration of this place :
lE,xityo; z^rx TT^oirQxffet; nxfcxipirxi
Tlv^yay, xyan xxi xxra rii^fl fur^oiy. Ver. 187.
20. Thou shalt see — ] For nrn, read nrnn with the
Chaldee : Houbigant.
21. But the glorious name of Jehovah — ] I take du?
for a noun, with LXX and Syr. : see Psal. xx. 1. Prov.
xviu. 10.
23. Thy mast — ] For Dam, their mast, Syr. reads
Tiain, LXX and Vul. T3in, « (s-«5 o-m i-^cxiyty, thy mast is
fallen aside: LXX, they seera to have read naa, or (nas)
Tain; or rather p xb, is not firm, the, negative having
been oraitted in the present text by mistake. However,
I have followed their sense, which seems very probable ; as
the present reading is to me extremely obscure.
24. Neither shall the inhabitant say — ] This verse is
somewhat obscure : the meaning of it seems to be, that the
army of Senacherib shall by the stroke of God be reduced
to so shattered and so weak a condition, that the Jews shall
fall upon the remains of them, and plunder them without
resistance : that the most infirm and disabled of the people
of Jerusalem shall come in for their share of the spoil ; the
lame shall seize the prey ; even the sick and the diseased
shall throw aside their infirmities, and recover strength
enough to hasten to the general plunder.
The last line of the verse is parallel to the first, and ex
presses the same sense in other words. Sickness being con
sidered as a visitation frora God, and a punishment of sin ;
the forgiveness of sin is equivalent to the removal of a dis
ease. Thus the Psalmist;
" Who forgiveth all thy sin ;
And healeth all thine infirmities." Psal. ciii. 3.

296 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXIII.
Where the latter line only varies the expression of the for
raer. And our blessed SaViotir reasons with the Jews on
the sarae principle : " Whether is it easier to say to the
sick of the palsy, Thy sins are forgiven thee ; or to say,
Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?" Mark ii. 9. See
also Matt, viii, 17, Isa, liii, 4, " Qui locus Isaise, 1 Pet,
ii, 24, refertur ad reraissionera peccatorum : hic vero ad
sanationem raorborura, quia ejusdem potentiffi et bonitatis
est utrumque praestare ; et, quia peccatis remissis, et morbi,
qui fructus sunt peccatorum, pelluntur :" Wetstein on Matt,
vin, 17,
That this prophecj- was exactly fulfilled, I think we may
gather from the history of this great event given by the
Prophet hiraself. It is plain, that Hezekiah, by his treaty
with Senacherib, by which he agreed to pay him three hun
dred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold, had stripped
himself of his whole treasure : he not only gave him all the
silver and gold that was in his own treasury, and in that of
the temple, but was even forced to cut off the gold from
the doors of the temple and from the pillars, with which
he had hiraself overlaid thera,' to satisfy the demands of the
king of Assyria : but after the destruction of the Assyrian
army we find, that he " had exceeding rauch riches, and
that he made himself treasuries for silver, and for gold, and
for precious stones," &c, ; 2 Chron, xxxii, 27, He was so
rich, that out of pride and vanity he displayed his wealth to
the ambassadors from Babylon, This cannot be otherwise
accounted for, than by the prodigious spoil that was taken
on the destruction of the Assyrian array.

CHAPTERS XXXIV, &XXXV,
These two chapters raake one distinct prophecy; an
entire, regular, and beautiful poera, consisting of two parts :
the first containing a denunciation of Divine Vengeance
against the enemies of the people or church of God ; the
second describing the flourishing state of the church of God,
consequent upon the execution of those judgments. The
event foretold is represented as of the highest importance,
and of universal concern : all nations are called upon to
attend to the declaration of it ; and the wrath of God is
denounced against all the nations; that is, all those dial

Chap. XXXIV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 297
had provoked to anger the defender of the cause of Sion.
Araong those, Edora is particularly specified. The prin
cipal provocation of Edora was their insulting the Jews in
their distress, and joining against thera with their enemies
the Chaldeans: see Araos i, 11, Ezek, xxv, 12, xxxv, 15,
Psal, cxxxvii, 7, AccQrdingly the Edoraites were, toge
ther with the rest of the neighbouring nations, ravaged and
laid waste by Nebuchadnezzar : see Jer. xxv, 15 — 26. Mal.
i, 3, 4, ; and see Marshara, Can, Chron, Saec, xvUi, who calls
this the age of the destruction of cities. The general de
vastation .spread through all these countries by Nebuchad
nezzar, raay be the event which the Prophet has primarily
in view in the xxxivth chapter ; but this event, as far as we
have any account of it in history, seems by no means_ to
corae up to the terms of the prophecy, or to justify so high-
wrought and so terrible a description- And it is not easy
to discover what connexion the extreraely flourishing state
of the church or people of God, described in the next chap
ter, could have with those events, and how the former could
be the consequence of the latter, as it is there represented
to be. By a figure very coramon in the prophetical writ
ings, any city, or people, remarkably distinguished as ene
mies of the people and kingdom of God, is put for those
enemies in general. This seeras here to be the case with
Edora and Botsra, It seems therefore reasonable to sup
pose, with many learned expositors, that this prophecy has
a further view to events still future ; to sorae great revo
lutions to be effected in later tiraes, antecedent to that more
perfect state of the kingdom of God upon earth, and serv
ing to introduce it, which the Holy Scriptures warrant us
to expect.
That the xxxvth chapter has a view beyond any thing
that could be the immediate consequence of those events, is
plain frora every part, especiaUy frora the raiddle of it, ver,
5, 6, ; where the rairaculous works wrought by our blessed
Saviour are so clearly specified, that we cannot avoid mak
ing the appUcation, And our Saviour hunself has moreover
plainly referred to this very passage as speaking of hira and
his works : Matt, xi, 4, 5, He bids the disciples of John
to go and report to their master the things which they
heard and saw ; that the bUnd received their sight, the lame
walked, and the deaf heard ; and leaves it to him to draw
the conclusion in answer to his inquiry, whether he who

298 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXIV.
performed the very works which the Prophets foretold
should be performed by the Messiah, was not indeed the
Messiah hiraself? And where are these works so distinctiy
marked by any of the Prophets as in this place ? and how
could they be marked more distincdy ? To these the strictly
literal inteipretation of the Prophet's words directs us.
According to the allegorical interpretation they may have
a further view ; This part of the prophecy may run parallel
with the former, and relate to the future advent of Christ ;
to the conversion of the Jews, and their restitution to their
land; to the extension and purification of the Christian
faith ; — events predicted in the Holy Scriptures, as prepara
tory to it,
I, And attend unto me — ] A MS adds in this line the
wOTd ibx, unto me, after Diiaxb ; which seeras to be genuine,
4, And all the host of heaven — ] See note on chap,
xxiv, 21, and De S, Poesi Hebraeorum Prael, ix,
5, For my sword is made bare in the heaven] There
seems to be sorae irapropriety in this, according to the pre
sent reading, " my sword is made drunken, or is bathed, in
the heavens;" which forestalls, and expresses not initspro-
per place, what belongs to the next verse : for the sword of
Jehovah was not to be bathed or glutted with blood in the
heavens, but in Botsra and the land of Edom, In the
heavens it was only prepared for slaughter. To reraedy
this. Archbishop Secker proposes lo read, for Dirawa, Dnia ;,
referring to Jer, xlvi, 10, But even this is premature, and
not in its proper place. The Chaldee^ for nnn, has ibann,
shall be revealed, or disclosed: perhaps he read nxm, or
nnxia. Whatever reading, different I presume from the
present, he might find in his copy, I follow the sense which
he has given of it,
6, For Jehovah celebrateth a sacrifice'] Ezekiel has
maiiifesdy imitated this place of Isaiah : he hath set forth
the great leaders and princes of the adverse powers under
the same erableras of goats, bulls, raras, fallings, &C, and
has added to the boldness of the imagery, by introdncing
God as summoning all the fowls of the air, and all the beasts
of the field, and bidding them to the feast which^ he has
prepared for thera by the slaughter of the enemies of his
people : —
<' And thou, son of man,
Thus saith- the Lord Jehovah ;

Chap, XXXIV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 299
Say to the bird of every wing.
And to every beast of the field,
Assemble yourselves, and come ;
Gather together from every side.
To the sacrifice which I make for you,
A great slaughter on the mountains of Israel,
And ye shall eat flesh and drink blood :
The flesh of the mighty shall ye eat.
And the blood of the lofty of the earth shal) ye drink ;
Of rams, of lambs, and of goats,
Of bullocks, all of them the fat ones of Basan :
And ye shaU eat fat, till ye are cloyed,
And drink blood, till ye are drunken ;
Of my slaughter, which I have slain for you,"
Ezek, xxxix, 16, 17,
The sublime author of the Revelation (chap, xix, 17, 18,)
has- taken this iraage from Ezekiel, rather than from Isaiah,
7, — with their blood] oraira : so an ancient MS, Syr,
and Chald,
8, — the defender of the cause of Sion] As from pi, pi,
a judge; so from ail, ail, an advocate, or defender: Judici
Sionis, Syr,
II, —over her scorched plains] The word niin, joined
to the 12th verse, embarrasses it, and makes it inexplicable.
At least I do nol know that any one has yet made out the
construction, or given any tolerable explication of it, I
join it to the llth verse, and supply a letter or two, which
seem to have been lost. Fifteen MSS (five ancient), and
two editions, read nmn. The first printed edition of
1486, I think nearer to the truth, niin iin, I read
niiina, or niiin br : see Jer, xvu, 6, A MS has niin,
and the Syriac reads nnn, gaudium, joining it to the two
preceding words; which he likewise reads differently, but
without improving the sense. However, his authority is
clear for dividing the verses, as they are here divided, I
read DW as a noun. They shall boast, ixipi ; see Prov. xx. 6.
13. And in her palaces shall spring up — ] ibri
mniaraixa ; so read all the ancient versions.
15. 'Every one her mate] A MS adds bx after m2?x,
which seeras necessary lo the construction ; and so Syr, and
Vulg, Another MS adds in the sarae place nx, which is
equivalent, 16, For the mouth of Jehovah] For xin, five MSS
(three ancientj read nini, and another is so corrected : so

300 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXIV.
likewise LXX, Two editions have Dia, and so LXX and
Vulg,; and a MS has Dsap, with the masculine pronoun
instead of the feminine: and so in the next verses it is
Dnb, instead of ^nb, in fourteen MSS, six of them ancient.

CHAPTER XXXV,
1, — shall be glad.] Diu?wi : In a MS the D seems to
have been added; and Dill? is upon a rasure in another.
None of the ancient versions acknowledge it : it seeras to
have been a mistake arising from the next word's beginning
with the sarae letter. Sixteen MSS have DHi?ni?i, and five
MSS D1!?U?i,
2, The Well-watered plain of Jordan,] For pil, the
LXX read pii ; rx t^itfix rov u^xyou. Four MSS read nba ;
see Joshua xv, 19, irrigua Jordani; Houbigant: mia, ripa
Jordani; Kennicott, See De S, Poesi Hebr, Praelect, xx.
note. Ibid, For nb, to it, nine MSS read ^b, to thee. See ibid,
7, — the glowing sand] am? : This word is Arabic as
well as Hebrew, expressing in both languages the sarae
thing ; the glowing sandy plain, which in the hot countries
at a distance has the appearance of water. It occurs in the
Koran, chap, xxiv, " But as to the unbelievers, their works
are like a vapour in a plain; which the thirsty traveller
thinketh lo be water, until, when he cometh tiiereto, he
findeth it to be nothing." Mr Sale's note on this place is :
— " The Arabic word serab signifies that false appearance
which in the eastern countries is often seen in sandy plains
about noon, resembling a large lake of water in motion, and
is occasioned by the reverberation of tlie sunbeams : [' by
the quivering undulating motion of that quick succession of
vapours and exhalations, which are extracted by the power
ful influence of the sun ;' Shaw, Trav, p, 378,] It some
times tempts thirsty travellers out of their way, but deceives
them? when they come near, either going forward, (for it
always appears at the same distance), or quite vanishes,"
Q, Curtius has mentioned it : — " Arenas vapor aestivi solis
accendit ;. — camporumque non alia, quam vasti et profundi
aequoris species est ;" lib, vii, cap, 5, Dr Hyde gives us the
precise meaning and derivation of the word : — " Dictum
noraen [Barca] npian, splendorem, seu splendentem regio-

Chap. XXXV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 301
jiem notat ; cum ea regio radiis solaribus tam copiose coUus-
Iretur, ut reflexura ab arenis luraen adeo intense fulgens, a
longinquo spectantibus, ad inslar corporis Solaris, aquarum
speciem referal; et hinc arenarum splendor et radiatio (ex
lingua Persica petito noraine) dicitur serab, i, e, aquae super
ficies, seu superficialis aquarum species :" Annot, in Peritsol,
cap, 2,
Ibid, — shall spring forth — ] The n, in naai, seeras to
have been at first D in MS Bodl, ; whence Dr Kennicott
concludes it should be Dijjai, But instead of this word,
Syr, Vulg, and Chald, read sorae word signifying to grow,
spring up, or abound; perhaps nsis, or 131S ; or yis
iixnn, as Houbigant reads,
8, And a highway] The word Tin is bj' raistake added
to the first meraber of the sentence frora .the beginning of
the following member : sixteen MSS (seven ancient) have
it but oncej so likewise Syr,
Ibid, — err therein] A MS adds ia, which seems neces
sary to the sense : and so Vulg, per earn.
Ibid, But He shall be with them walking — ] That is,
God ; see ver, 4, " Who shall dwell among them, and set
them an example, that they should follow his steps," Our
old English versions translated the place to this purpose : our
last translators were misled by the authority of the Jews, who
have absurdly raade a division of the verses in the midst of
the sentence, thereby destroying the construction and the
sense, 9, Neither shall he be found there] Three MSS read
xbi, adding the conjunction; and so likewise LXX and
Vulg. And four MSS (one ancient) read xsrai, the verb,
as it certainly ought to be, in the masculine form.
For further remarks on the two foregoing chapters, see
De S, Poesi Hebr, Praelect, xx.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
The history of the invasion of Senacherib, and of the
miraculous destruction of his army, which makes the subject
of so many of Isaiah's prophecies, is very properly inserted
here, as affording the best light to many parts of those pro
phecies; and as almost necessary to introduce the prophecy in
the xxxviith chapter, being the answer of God to Hezekiah's

302 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXVI.
prayer, which could nol be properly understood without it.
We find the same narrative in the second book of Kings,
chapters xviii, xix, xx,; and these chapters of Isaiah, xxxvi,
isxxvii, xxxviii, xxxix, for much the most part, (the account
of the sickness of Hezekiah only excepted), are but a differ
ent copy of that narration. The difference of the two copies
is little more than what has manifestly arisen from the mis-
lakes of transcribers : they mutuaUy correct each other, and
most of the mistakes may be perfectly rectified by a collation
of the two copies, with the assistance of the ancient versions.
Some few sentences, or merabers of sentences, are omitted
in this copy of Isaiah, which are found in the other copy in
the book of Kings. Whether these omissions were made by
design or by mistake, may be doubted : these therefore I
have not inserted in the translation ; I shall only report them
in the notes.
3. Then came out unto him] Before these words, the
other copy, 2 Kings xviu. 18. adds ^bran bx jxipii, " and
they deraanded audience of the king."
5. Thou hast said] Fourteen MSS (three ancient) have
it in the second person, nirax ; and so the other copy,
2 Kings xviii. 20.
6. — in Egypt] MS Bodl. adds -[bra, the king of Egypt :
and so perhaps Chald. raight read.
7. But if ye say] Two ancient MSS have iiraxn in the
plural number: so likewise LXX, Chald. and the other
copy, 2 Kings xviii. 22,
Ibid, only before this altar — ] See 2 Chron, xxxii, 12,
12, destined to eat their own dung] baxb, " that they
may eat," as our translation literally renders it. But Syr,
reads baxra, " that they may not eat," perhaps rightly; and
afterward ninwrai, or ninii?i, to the same purpose,
17, — and of vineyards] The other copy, 2 Kings xviii',
32, adds here, " a land of oil-olive,- and of honey ; that ye
may live, and not die: and hearken not unto Hezekiah,
when he seduceth you."
19. — of Sepharvaim — ] The other copy, 2 Kings xviu,
34, adds, of " Henah and Ivah,"
Ibid, have they delivered] iai, the copulative is not ex
pressed here by LXX, Syr, Vulg, and three MSS; nor is
it in the other copy; Ibid. Houbigant reads lan, with the
interrogative particle : a probable conjecture, which the an
cient versions, above quoted, seem to fiivour.

Chap. XXXVI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 303
21. But the people held their peace] The word Dm,
the people, is supplied from the other copy ; and is author
ized by a MS, which inserts il after inx.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
7. I will infuse a spirit into him] " nil ia ^ina never
signifies any tiling but putting a spirit into a person ; this
was miuftX' ^eiXixe :" SecKER.
9, he sent messengers again] The word rraTl?ii, [and he
heard), which occurs the second time in this verse, is re
peated by mistake frora the beginning- of the verse. It is
oraitted in an ancient MS, It is a raere tautology, and
erabarrasses the sense. The true reading, instead of it, is
aii?ii, which the LXX read in this place atrss-ge^-E, and which
is preserved in the other copy, 2 Kings xix. 9. " He re
turned and sent" — that is, according to the Hebrew idiora,
" he sent again."
14. — and read thera] DXipil, so MS Bodl. in this place ;
and so the other copy; instead of inxipil, and read it.
Ibid, — and spread them] inil?isii ; in is upon a rasure
in a MS ; which probably was at first D, The same mistake
as in the foregoing note,
15, — before Jehovah] That is, in the sanctuary. For
bx, Syr, Chald, and the other copy, 2 Kings xix, 15, read,
lasb. 18, — the nations — ] nisixn, the lands: instead of this
word, which destroys the sense, ten MSS (one ancient)
have here Diia, nations; which is undoubtedly the true read
ing, being preserved also in the other copy, 2 Kings xix, 17,
Another MS suggests another raethod of rectifying the sense
in this place, by reading Dabra, their king, instead of DSix,
their land; but il ought to be Dniabra, " all the countries
and their kings,"
20, Save us, we beseech thee — ] The supplicating particle
xa is supplied here from eighteen MSS (three ancient),
and frora the other copy.
Ibid, — that thou Jehovah art the only God] The
word Dinbx, God, is lost here in the Hebrew text, but pre-
•served in the other copy, 2 Kings xix, 19, Syr, and LXX
seem here to have had in their copies Dinbx, instead of nini.
21. Then Isaiah sent unto Hezekiah] Syr,, and LXX
understand and render the verb passively, was sent.

304, NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXVII.
Ibid, — / have heard] inrrari?: this word, necessary lo
the sense, is lost in this place out of the Hebrew text, A
MS has it written above the line in a later hand, LXX
and Syr, found il in their copies ; and it is preserved in the
other copy, 2 Kings xix, 20,
23, — against the Holy One of Israel] For bx, the other
copy has br, rather more properly,
24, By thy messengers — ] The text has liiar, thy ser
vants : but the true reading seeras lo be -[laxbra, thy messen
gers, as in the other copy, 2 Kings xix, 23, ; and as LXX
and Syr, found it in their copies in this place.
Ibid, — his extreme retreats] The text has Diira, the
highth ; which seeras lo have been taken by mistake from
the line but one above, A MS has here pbn, the lodge, or
retreat; which is the word in the other copy, 2 Kings xix,
23, ; and I think is the true reading,
25, — strange waters] The word Diir, strange, lost out
of the Hebrew text in this place, is supplied frora the other
copy, A MS suppUes the word Dial, many, instead of il.
Ibid, all the' canals of fenced places] The principal cities
of Egypt, the scene of his late exploits, were chiefly defended
by deep moats, canals, or large lakes, raade by labour and
art, with which they were surrounded. See Harmer's Observ,
ii, p, 304, Claudian introduces Alaric ^boasting of his con
quests in the same extravagant manner :
" Subsidere nostris
Sub pedibus montes ; arescere vidimus amnes, —
Fregi Alpes, galeisque Padum victricibus hausi,"
De BeUo Getic, 526,
26. warlike nations] Disa Diba. It is not easy to give a
satisfactory account of these two words ; which have greatly
embarrassed all the interpreters, ancient and modern. For
Diba, I read Diia, as the LXX do in this place, s^n. The
word DiJta, Vulg. renders in this place compugnantium ; in
the paraUel place, 2 Kings xix. 25. pugnantium, and LXX,
fixxifim, fighting, warlike. This rendering is as well autho
rized as any other that I know of, and, with the reading of
LXX, perfectly clears up the construction.
27. corii blasted] nra ill?. It does not appear that there
is any good authority for this word. The true reading
seems to be nsiii?, as it is in four MSS (two ancient), here,
and in the other copy.
29. I will put my hook in thy nose] " Etfrcenum meum .-

Chap. XXXVII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 305
Jonathan vocem anri interpretatus est Drar, i. e. aniiulura,
sive uncura, eumque ferreum, quera infigunt naribus. ca-
raelae : eoque trahitur, quoniam ilia feris raotibus agilur : et
hoc est, quod disciraus in Talraude ; et caraela cura annulo
narium : scilicet, egreditur die Sabbalhi :" Jarchi in 2 Reg.
xix. 28. " Ponara circulum in naribus tuis :" Hieron. Just
as at this day they put a ring into the nose of the bear, the
buffalo, and other wild beasts, to lead thera, and to govern
them when they are unruly.
35. And the angel — ] Before " the angel," the other
copy, 2 Kings xix. 35. adds, " it came to pass the same
night, that" 
The Prophet Hosea has given a plain prediction of this
miraculous deliverance of the kingdom of Judah :
" And to the house of Judah I will be tenderly merciful :
And I will save them by Jehovah their God.
And I will not save them by the bow ;
Nor by sword, nor by battle ;
By horses, nor by horsemen." Hosea i. 7.

CHAPTER XXXVIIL
2. Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall] The fur
niture of an eastern divan, or charaber either for the recep
tion of corapany or for private use, consists chiefly of carpets
spread on the floor in the middle, and of sophas or couches
ranged on one or more sides of the roora, on a part raised
soraewhat above the floor. On these they repose theraselves
in the day, and sleep at night. It is to be observed, that
the corner of the room is the place of honour. Dr Pococke,
when he was introduced to the Sheik of Furshout, found
hira sitting in the corner of his roora. He describes ano
ther Arab Sheik, " as sitting in a corner of a large green
tent, pitched in the middle of an encampment of Arabs;
and the Bey of Girge as placed on a sopha in a corner to
the right as One entered the roora :" Harraer's Obs. ii. p. 60.
Lady Mary W, Montague, giving an account of a visit
which she raade to the Kahya's lady at Adrianople, says,
" She ordered cushions to be given me, and took care to
place me in the corner, which is the place of honour :"
Letter xxxin. The reason of this seems to be, that the per
son, so placed, is distingui.shed, and in a manner separated

306 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXVIII.
from the rest of the company, and as it were guarded by the
wall on each side. We are to suppose Hezekiah's couch
placed in the same situation ; in which, turning on either
side, he must turn his face to the wall ; by which he would
vrithdraw himself from those who were attending upon him in
his apartment, in order to address his private prayer to God,
4, 5, The words in the translation included within crotchets
are supplied from the parallel place, 2 Kings xx, 4, 5, to
make the narration more perfect, I have also taken the
liberty, with Houbigant, of bringing forward the two last
verses of this chapter, and inserting them in their proper
places of the narration with the sarae raark, Kimchi's note
on these two verses is as follows : " This and the following
verse belong not to the writing of Hezekiah : and I see no
reason why they are written here after the writing ; for their
right place is above, after And I will protect this city, ver, 6,
And so they stand in the book of Kings ;" 2 Kings xx, 7, 8,
The narration of this chapter seems to be in some parts an
abridgment of that of 2 Kings xx. The abridger, having
finished his extract here with the llth verse, seems to have
observed, that the 7th and 8th verses of 2 Kings xx, were
wanted to complete the narration : he therefore added them
at the end of the chapter, 'after he had inserted the song of
Hezekiah, probably with marks for their insertion in their
proper places ; which marks were afterwards neglected by
transcribers : or a transcriber might omit them by mistake,
and add them at the end of the chapter with such marks.
Many transpositions are, with great probabUity, to be ac
counted for in the same way,
6, I will protect this city — ] The other copy, 2 Kings
XX, 6, adds, " for mine own sake, and for the sake of Darid
my servant ;" and the sentence seems somewhat abrupt with
out it,
6, l>y which the sun is gone down — ] For ii?raii?a, LXX,
Syr, Chald, read ii?raTi?n : Houbigant, In the history of
this miracle in the book of Kings, 2 Kings xx, 9 — 11, there
is no mention at all raade of the sun, but only of the going
backward of the shadow ; which raight be effected by a su
pernatural refraction, "The first » ityio; in this verse is omit
ted in LXX, MS Pachom,
9, The writing of Hezekiah.] Here the book of Kings
deserts us, the song of Hezekiah not being inserted in it.
Another copy of this very obscure passage (obscure not only

Chap. XXXVIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 307
frora the concise poetical style, but because it is probably
very incorrect) would have been of great service. The
MSS and ancient versions, especially the latter, will help us
to get through some of the many difficulties whicih we meet
with in it,
II, Jehovah — ] ni ni seeras to be mni in MS Bodl,
and it was so at first written in another : so Syr, See Hou
bigant, 12, — a shepherd's tent — ] iri is put for nri, say the
Rabbins ; Sal, b. Melee on the place : but much more pro
bably is written imperfectly for Diri, See note on chap, v, 1,
Ibid, My life is cut off'—] imsp : this verb is rendered
passively, and in the third person, by Syr, Chald, Vulg,
13, The last line of the foregoing verse, nbib ir DVra
laraibirn, " In the course of the day thou wilt finish my
web," is not repeated at the end of diis verse in the Syriac
version ; and a MS oraits it. It seems to have been in
serted a second time in the Hebrew text by mistake.
Ibid, I roared^ For in iin?, the Chaldee has nirana :
he read inaxii?, the proper terra for the roaring ofa Uon;
often applied to the deep groaning of men in sickness : see
Psal, xxii. 2, xxxii, 3, xxxviii, 9, Job iii, 24, The Masoretes
divide the sentence, as I have done, taking nxa, like a lion,
into the first member ; and so likewise LXX,
14, Like the swallow — ] Dioa ; so read two MSS, Theod,
' and Hieron.
Ibid, — mine ^yes fail — ] For ibi, the LXX read iba,
i\iUiroy. Compare Psal, Ixix, 4, cxix, 82, 123, Lam, ii, 11, iv,
17, in the Hebrew and in LXX,
Ibid, — O Lord — ] For mni, thirty MSS and eight
editions read laix.
Ibid, — contend thou — ] npii?r, with u?, Jarchi. This
sense of the word is estabUshed by Gen, xxvi, 20, " he called
the name of the well pu?r, Esek, because they strove with
him:" ipn?rnn, equivalent to lani at the beginning of the
verse, 15, — will I reflect — ] mix, recogitabo, Vulg, rep-utalbo,
Hieron, in loc,
16, For this cause shall it be declared — ] Vii^i xvr-m yag
xviiyyi-Kti foi, xxi i^vyii^x; ftou t«v ttvobv, LXX, They read in
their copies, inii unni ^b iini nibr; not very different
from the present text, frora which all the ancient versions
vary. They entirely omit two words, ^na babi ; as to which

308 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XXXVIII.
there is some variation in the MSS, A MS has baai, two
others bai, and ten MSS have Dna,
Ibid. — hast prolonged my life.] A MS and the Baby
lonish Talmud read lannni; and so the ancient versions.
It must necessarily be in the second person,
17, My anguish is changed into ease — ] ira ib ira,
" mutata raihi est . araaritudo," Paronoraasia ; a figure,
which the Prophet frequently adraits : I do not always note
it, because it cannot ever be preserved in the translation,
and the sense seldora depends upon it. But here it per
fectly clears up the great obscurity of the passage. See
Lowth on the place.
Ibid, Thou hast rescued — ] n a 11? n, with a instead of p ;
so LXX and Vulg, : Houbigant, See Chappelow on Job
xxxiii, 18,
Ibid, —from perdition — ] iba nni2?ra, hx fi-/i xvoM-rxi,
LXX; ut non periret, Vulg.; perhaps inverting the order
of the words. See Houbigant,
19, , — thy truth] "jnrax bx, A MS omits bx ; and in
stead of bx, an ancient MS and one edition read nx. The
same mistake as in Psal, ii, 7,
21, Let them take a lump of figs .- and they bruised them — ]
God, in effecting this rairaculous cure, was pleased to order
the use of means not improper for that end, " Folia, et,
quae non maturuere, fici, strumis illinuntur, omnibusque quse
emolUenda sunt discutiendave :" Plin, Nat, Hist, xxiii. 7.
" Ad discutienda ea, quae in corporis parte aliqua coierunt,
maxirae possunt — ficus arida," &c. : Celsus, v. 11.

CHAPTER XXXIX,
Hitherto the copy of this history in the second book of
Kings has been rauch the most correct : in this chapter, that
in Isaiah has the advantage. In the two first verses two
mistakes in the other copy are to be corrected from this : for
imprn, Hezekiah, read prnii, and was recovered ; and for
rr3ii?ii, he heard, read nraiyil, he rejoiced.
1, — and ambassadors.] The LXX add here xxi Tt^uZu;-,
that is, Diaxbrai, and ambassadors; which word seems
necessary to the sense, though omitted in the Hebrew text
both here and in the other copy, 2 Kings xx, 12, For the
subsequent narration refers to them all along; " these men,

Chap. XXXIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 309
whence carae they?" &c, plainly supposing thera to have
been personally mentioned before. See Houbigant.
6. — to Babylon — ] nbaa ; so two MSS (one ancient) ;
righdy without doubt, as the other copy, 2 Kings xx. 17.
has it.
8. And Hezekiah said — ] The nature of Hezekiah's
crime, and his humiliation on the message of God to him
by the Prophet, is more expressly declared by the author of
the book of Chronicles : " But Hezekiah rendered not again,
according to the benefit done unto him ; for his heart was
lifted up : therefore there was wrath upon hira, and upon
Judah and Jerusalera. Notwithstanding, Hezekiah hurabled
hiraself for the pride of his heart, (both he and the inhabi
tants of Jerusalem), so that the wrath of the Lord came
not upon thera in the days of Hezekiah. And Hezekiah
prospered in aU his works. Howbeit, in the business of the
arabassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto hira
to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God
left hira, to try him, that he might know all that was in his
heart;" 2 Chron. xxxii, 25, 26, 30, 31,

CHAPTER XL,
The course of prophecies, which follow from hence to
the end of the book, and which taken together constitute
the raost elegant part of the sacred writings of the Old Testa
ment ; interspersed also with many passages of the highest
subUmity ; was probably delivered in the latter part of the
reign of Hezekiah, The Prophet in the foregoing chapter
had delivered a very explicit declaration of the irapending
dissolution of the kingdora, and of the captivity of the royal
house of David, and of the people, under the kings of Baby
lon, As the subject of his subsequent prophecies was to be
chiefly of the consolatory kind, he opens them with giving
a promise of the restoration of the kingdora, and the return
of the people from that captivity, by the merciful interposi
tion of God in their favour. But the views of the Prophet
are not confined to this event. As the restoration of the
royal famUy, and of the tribe of Judah, which would other
wise have soon becorae undistinguished, and have been irre
coverably lost, was necessary, in the design and order of
Providence, for the fulfilling of God's proraises of establish-

310 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XL.
ing a more glorious and an everlasting kingdom, under the
Messiah to be born of the tribe of Judah, and of the famUy
of David ; the Prophet connects these two events together,
and hardly ever treats of the former without throwing in
some intimations of the latter; and sometimes is so fullv
possessed with the glories of the future more remote king
dom, that he seems to leave the more iraraediate subject of
his comraission alraost out of the question.
Indeed this evangelical sense of the prophecy is so ap
parent, and stands forth in so strong a light, that some in
terpreters cannot see that it has any other; and wiU not
allow the prophecy to have any relation at all to the return
from the captivity of Babylon, It may be useful, therefore,
to exaraine raore attentively the train of the Prophet's ideas,
and to consider carefully the images under which he displays
his subject. He hears a crier giving orders by solemn pro-
claraation to prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness ;
to remove all obstructions before Jehovah marching through
the desert ; through the wild, uninhabited, unpassable coun
try. The deliverance of God's people from the Babylonish
captivity is considered by him as parallel to the former de
liverance of them from the Egyptian bondage, God was
then represented as their king, leading them in person
through the vast deserts, which lay in their way to the pro
mised land of Canaan, It is not merely for Jehovah him
self, that in both cases the way was to be prepared, and aU
obstructions to be removed ; but for Jehovah marching in
person at the head of his people. Let us first see, how this
idea is pursued by the sacred poets who treat of the Exodus,
which is a favourite subject with them, and affords great
choice of examples : —
" When Israel came out nf Egypt ;
The house of Jacob, from the barbarous people ;
Judah was his sanctuary,
Israel his dominion," Psal, cxiv, 1, 2.
" Jehovah his God is with him ;
And the shout of a king is among them :
God brought them out of Egypt," Numb, xxiii. 21,22.
" Make a highway for him that rideth through the deserts :
O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people ;
When thou marchedst through the wilderness,
The heavens dropped," Psal, Ixviii, 4, 7,
Let us now see how Isaiah treats the subject of the return

Chap. XL. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 311
of the people from Babylon : they were to march through
the wilderness with Jehovah at their head, who was to lead
them, to smooth the way before them, and to supply thera
with water in the thirsty desert ; with perpetual aUusion to
the Exodus :
" Come ye forth from Babylon, flee ye from the land of the
Chaldeans with the voice of joy :
Publish ye this, and make it heard ; utter it forth even to
the end of the earth :
Say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed his servant Jacob :
They thirsted not in the deserts, through which he made
them go ;
Waters from the rock he caused to flow for them ;
Yea he clave the rock, and forth gushed the waters,"
Chap, xlviii. 20, 21.
" Remember not the former things ;
And the things of ancient times regard not :"
(That is, the deliverance frora Egypt) :
" Behold, I make a new thing ;
Even now shall it spring forth : will ye not regard it ?
Yea I will make in the wilderness a way ;
In the desert, streams of water," Chap, xliii. 18, 19.
" But he that trusteth in me shall inherit the land.
And shall possess my holy mountain.
Then will I say, Cast up, cast up the causeway; make clear
the way ;
Remove every obstruction from the road of my people,''
Chap, Ivii, 13, 14.
" How beautiful appear on the mountains
The feet of the joyful messenger, of him that announceth
peace ;
Of the joyful messenger of good tidings, of him that an
nounceth salvation ;
Of him that sayeth to Sion, Thy God reigneth !
All thy watchmen lift up their voice, they shout together ;
For face to face shall they see, when Jehovah returneth
to Sion.
Verily not in haste shall ye go forth ;
And not by flight shall ye march along :
For Jehovah shall march in your front ;
And the God of Israel shall bring up your rear.''
Chap, Iii, 7, 8, 12,
Babjflon was separated from Judea by an immense tract
of country, which was one continued desert ; that large part
of Arabia called very properly Deserta, It is mentioned

312 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XL.
in history as a remarkable occurrence, that Nebuchadnezzar,
having received the news of the death of his father, in order
to make the utmost expedition in his journey to Babylon
from Egypt and Phoenicia, set out with a few attendants,
and passed through this desert, Berosus, apud Joseph,
Antiq, x, 1 1, This was the nearest way homewards for the
Jews ; and whether they actually returned by this way or
not, the first thing that would occur on the proposa;l or
thought of their return, would be the difficulty of this al
most impracticable passage. Accordingly the proclamation
for the preparation of the way is the most natural idea, and
the most obvious circumstance, by which the Prophet could
have opened his subject.
These things considered, I have not the least doubt, that
the return of the Jews frora the captivity of Babylon is the
first, though not the principal, thing in the Prophet's view.
The redemption from Babylon is clearly foretold ; and at
the sarae tirae is eraployed as an iraage to shadow out a re>-
demption of an infinitely higher and more important nature.
I should not have thought it necessary to employ so many
words in endeavouring to establish what is called the hteral
sense of this prophecy, which I think cannot be rightly un
derstood without it, had I not observed, that many inter
preters of the first authority, in particular the very learned
Vitringa, have excluded it entirely.
Yet obvious and plain as I think this literal sense is, we
have nevertheless the irrefragable authority of John the Bap
tist, and of our blessed Sariour himself, as recorded by all
the Evangelists, for explaining this exordium of the pro
phecy of the opening of the gospel by the preaching of
John, and of the introducing of the kingdora of Messiah ;
who was to effect a rauch greater deliverance of the people
of God, Gentiles as well as Jews, frora the captivity of sin
and the dorainion of death. And this we shall find to be
the case in many subsequent parts also of this prophecy,
where passages manifestly relating to the deliverance of the
Jewish nation, effected by Cyrus, are with good reason,
and upon undoubted authority, to be understood of the
rederaption wrought for mankind by Christ.
If the literal sense of this prophecy, as above explained,
cannot be questioned, much less surely can the spiritual;
which, I think, is allowed on all hands, even by Grotius
himself. If both are to be adraitted, here is a plain example

Chap. XL, NOTES ON ISAIAH. 313
of the mystical allegory, or double sense, as it is commonly
called, of prophecy ; which the sacred writers of the New
Testaraent clearly suppose, and according to which they
frequendy frarae their interpretation of passages of the Old
Testament. Of the foundation and properties of this sort
of aUegory, see De S. Poes. Hebr. Praelect. xi.
2. Blessings double to the punishment] It does not seera
reconcileable to our notions of the divine justice, which
always punishes less than our iniquities deserve, to suppose,
that God had punished the sins of the Jews in double pro
portion : and it is more agreeable to the tenor of this con-
^solatory message, to understand it as a promise of ample
recompense for the effects of past displeasure, on the recon-
ciUation of God to his returning people. To express this
sense of the passage, which the words of the original will
very weU bear, it was necessary to add a word or two in
the version to supply the eUiptical expression of the He
brew. X^ompare chap. bd. 7. Job xiii. 10. Zech. ix. 12.
naan signifies punishraent for sin, Lara. iii. 39. Zech. xiv.
19. 3. A voice crieth : In the wilderness — ] The idea is
taken frora the practice of eastern raonarchs, who, whenever
they entered upon an expedition, or took a journey, espe
cially through desert and unpractised countries, sent har
bingers before them to prepare all things for their passage,
and pioneers to open the passes, to level the ways, and to
remove all impediraents. The officers appointed to super
intend such preparations the Latins call Stratores. " Ipse
(Johannes Baptista) se stratorem vocat Messiffi, cujus esset
alta et elata voce horaiiies in desertis locis habitantes ad
itinera et rias Regi mox venture sternendas et reficiendas
hortari :" Mosheira, Instituta Majora, p. 96.
Diodorus's account of Serairarais's marches into Media
and Persia, will give us a clear notion of the preparation of
the way for a royal expedition : "In her raarch to Ecbatane
she came to the Zarcean mountain ; which extending many
furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hol
lows, could not be passed without taking a great compass
about. Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting
memorial of herself, as weU as of shortening the way, she
ordered the precipices to be digged down, and the hoUows
to be filled up ; and at a great expense she made a shorter
and more expeditious road, which to this day is called from

314 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XL.
her the Road of Serairamis. Afterward she went into Per
sia, and all the other countries of Asia subject to her domi
nion ; and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains
and precipices to be levelled, raised causeways in the plain
country, and at a great expense made the ways passable :"
Diod. Sic. lib. ii.
The writer of the apocryphal book caUed Baruch, ex
presses the same subject by the same iraages ; either taking
them from this place of Isaiah, or from the comraon notions
of his countrymen : " For God hath appointed, that every
high hill, and banks of long continuance, shoidd be cast
down, and vallies filled up, to make even the ground, that
Israel may go safely in the glory of God ;" chap. v. 7.
The Jewish church, to which John was sent to announce
the coming of Messiah, was at that time in a barren and
desert condition, unfit without reformation for the reception
of her king. It was in this desert country, destitute at diat
time of all religious cultivation, in true piety and good
works unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way of
the Lord by preaching repentance. I have distinguished
the parts of the sentence according to the punctuation of the
Masoretes, which agrees best both vrith the Uteral and the
spiritual sense; which the construction and parallelism of
the distich in the Hebrew plainly favours.; and of which the
Greek of the LXX and of the EvangeUsts is equally sus
ceptible. John was born in the desert of Judea, and passed his
whole life in it, till the time of his being manifested to Israel.
He preached in the same desert ; it was a mountainous
country ; however, not entirely and properly a desert, for,
though less cultivated than other parts of Judea, yet it was
not uninhabited: Joshua (chap. xv. 61, 62.) reckons six
cities in it. We are so prepossessed with the idea of John's
living and preaching in the desert, that we are apt to con
sider this particular scene of his preaching as a very impor
tant and essential part of his history : whereas I apprehend
this circumstance to be no otherwise important, than as
giving us a strong idea of the rough character of the man,
which was answerable to the place of his education ; and as
affording a proper erablera of the rude state of the Jewish
church at that time ; which was the true wilderness meant
by the Prophet, in which John was to prepare the way for
the coraing of the Messiah.

Chap. XL. NOTES ON ISAIAH- >-3I3
4, The word apr is very generally rendered crooked;
but this sense of the word seems not to be supported by any
good authority. Ludolphus, Comment, ad Hist. iEthiop,
p, 206, says, that in the .^thiopic language it signifies
dims, locus editus ; and so the Syriac version renders it in
this place xrair, Heb, nrair, tumulus, acervus. Thus die
parallelism would be more perfect: " the hilly country
shaU be made level, and the precipices a smooth plain,"
5, — the salvation of our God] These words are added
here by LXX: to trum^ioy tou ©sou, lainbx nrn2?i nx, as it is
in the paraUel place, chap, Ui, 10, The sentence is abrupt
without it, the verb wanting its object ; and I think it is
genuine. Our English translation has supplied the word it,
which is equivalent to this addition from LXX,
This omission in the Hebrew text is ancient, being prior
to the Chaldee, Syriac, and Vulgate versions : but the words
stand in all the copies of the LXX ; and they are acknow
ledged by Luke, iii, 6,
6, its glory — ] For ilDn read "t-iTi ; LXX, and Vulg,
and I Pet, i, 24,
7, this people — ] So Syr, who perhaps read nrn Drn,
6 — 8. A voice sayeth, Proclaim — ] To understand rightly
this passage is a matter of importance ; for it seems designed
to give us the true key to the remaining part of Isaiah's
prophecies; the general subject of which is the restoration
of the people and church of God. The Prophet opens the
subject with great clearness and elegance : he declares at
once God's comraand to his raesssengers, (his Prophets, as
the Chaldee rightly explains it), to corafort his people in
captivity, to irapart to them the joyful tiding,s, that their
punishment has now satisfied the divine justice, and the
tirae of reconcUiation and favour is at hand. He then in
troduces a harbinger giving orders to prepare the way for
God leading his people from Babylon, as he did formerly
from Egypt, through the wUderness ; to remove all obsta^
cles, and to clear the way for their passage. Thus far no
thing more appears to be intended than a return from the
Babylonish captivity;' but the next words seem to intimate
something much greater :
" And the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed;
And all flesh shall see together the salvation of our God."
He then introduces a voice commanding hira to make a
solemn proclamation. And what is the import of it? That

316 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XL.
the people, the flesh, is of a vain temporary nature ; that all
its glory fadeth, and is soon gone; but that the word of
God endureth for ever. What is this, but a plain opposi
tion of the flesh to the spirit ; of the carnal Israel to the
spiritual ; of the teraporary Mosaic economy to the eternal
Christian dispensation ? You may be ready to conclude,
(the Prophet may be supposed to say), by this introduction
to ray discourse, that ray commission is only to comfort you
with a promise of the restoration of your religion and polity,
of Jerusalem, of the temple, and its services and worship in
all its ancient splendour: These are earthly, temporary,
shadowy, fading things, which shall soon pass away, and be
destroyed for ever; these are not worthy to engage your
attention, in comparison of the greater blessings, the spiri--
tual rederaption, the eternal inheritance, covered under the
veil of the former, which I have it in charge to unfold unto
you. The law has only a shadow of good things ; the sub
stance is the gospel, I promise you a restoration of the
former ; which, however, is only for a tiine, and shall be
done away, according to God's original appointment : but
under that image I give you a view of the latter ; which
shall never be done away, but shaU endure for ever. This
I take to be agreeable to St Peter's interpretation of this
passage of the Prophet, quoted by him 1 Pet, i, 24, 25,
" All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower
of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth
away; but the word of the Eord enditreth for ever. And
this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you."
This is the same word of the Lord of which Isaiah speaks,
which hath now been preached unto you by the gospel. The
law and the gospel are frequendy opposed to one another
by St Paul under the images of flesh and spirit : " Having
begun in the spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?"
Gal. iii. 3.
7. When the wind of Jehovah—] nini nil, a wind of
Jehovah, is a Hebraism, meaning no more than a strong
wind. It is well known, that a hot wind in the East destroys
at once every green thing. Corapare Psal. ciii. 16. Two
MSS orait the word nini, Jehovah.
9. O daughter that bringest glad tidings] That the true
construction of the sentence is this, which raakes Sion the
receiver, not the publisher, of the glad tidings, (which latter
has been the raost prevailing interpretation), will, I think,

Chap. XL. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 317
very clearly appear, if we rightly consider the image itself,
and the custom and common practice frora which it is taken.
I have added the word daughter, to express the feminine
gender of the Hebrew participle, which I know not how
to do otherwise in our language. And this is absolutely
necesisary in order to ascertain the image ; for the office of
announcing and celebrating such glad tidings as are here
spoken of,- belonged peculiarly to the women. On occasion
of any great public success, a signal victory, or any other '
joyful event, it was usual for the women to gather together,
and with rausic, dances, and songs, to publish and celebrate
the happy news. Thus, after the passage of the Red Sea,
Miriara, and all the woraen, with tirabrels in their hands,
formed a chorus, and joined the raen in their triuraphant
song, dancing, and throwing in alternately the refrain or
burthen of the song : —
" Sing ye to Jehovah, for he is greatly exalted ;
The horse and his rider hath he cast into the sea."
Exod. XV. 20, 21.
So Jephthah's daughter coUected a chorus of virgins, and
with dances and songs carae out to raeet her father, and to
celebrate his victory ; Judg. xi. 34. After David's conquest
of Goliah, " all the woraen came out of the cities of Israel,
singing and dancing, to meet Saul, with tabrets, with joy,
and with instruments of music;" and forming themselves
. into two chorusses, they sung alternately, —
" Saul has slain his thousands ;
And David his ten thousands." 1 Sam. xviii. 6, 7.
And this gives us the true sense of a passage in the Ixviiith
Psalm, which has frequently been misunderstood : —
" Jehovah gave the word ; (that is, the joyful news) ;
The women, who published the glad tidings, were a great
company :
The kings of mighty armies did flee, did flee ;
And even the matron, who staid at home, shared the spoil."
The word signifying the publishers of glad tidings is the
same, and expressed in the same form by the feminine par
ticiple, as in this place ; and the last distich is the song which
they sung. So in this place, Jehovah having given the
word by his Prophet, the joyful tidings of the restoration of
Sion, and of God's returning to Jerusalem, (see chap. Iii.
8.), the women are exhorted by the Prophet to publish the
joyful news with a loud voice from eminences, whence they

318 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XL.
might best be heard all over the country; and the matter
and burthen of their song was to be, " Behold your God !"
10. — his reward, and the recompense of his work] That
is, the reward and the recompense, which he bestows, and
which he will pay to his faithful servants : this he has ready
at hand with him, and holds it out before him, to encourage
those who trust in him, and wait for him.
II. The nursing ewes shall he gently lead] . A beautifiil
¦ image, expressing, with the utmost propriety as well as ele
gance, the tender attention of the shepherd to his flock.
That the greatest care in driving the catde in regard to the
dams and their young was necessary, appears clearly from
Jacob's apology to his brother Esau, Gen. xxxiii. 13. " The
flocks and the herds giving suck to their young are with
me; and if they should be over-driven, all the flock will
die." Which is set in a still stronger light by the following
remark of Sir John Chardin : " Their flocks, (says he, speak
ing of those who now live in the East after the patriarchal
manner), feed down the places of their encampraents so
quick, by the great nurabers that they have, that they are
obliged to remove them too often ; which is very destructive
to their flocks on account of the young ones, who have not
strength enough to follow :" Harmer's Observ. i. p. 1 26.
16. And Lebanon is not sufficient — ] The image is beau
tiful and uncommon ; it has been imitated by an apocryphal
writer, who however comes far short of the original : —
" For all sacrifice is too little for a sweet savour unto thee ;
And all the fat is not sufficient for thy burnt-offering." Judith xvi. 16.
19. — and forgeth — ] For Ills, the participle, twenty-
, seven MSS (five ancient), and three editions, read tils,
praet. 3d person.
21. — understood it from the foundation — ] The true
reading seems to be niiDirara, to answer to Ii?xir2 in the
foregoing line. It follows a word ending with ra ; and out
of three mems concurring, it was an easy mistake to drop the
middle one.
22. — as a thin veil] " It is usual in the sumraer season,
and upon all occasions, when a large corapany is to be re
ceived, to have the court sheltered frora heat, or incleraency
of the weather, by a velum, urabrella, or veU, as I shall call
it ; which, being expanded on ropes from one side of the
parapet-wall to the other, may be folded or unfolded at

Chap. XL. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 319
pleasure. The Psalmist seems to allude to some covering
of this kind in that beautiful expression of spreading out the
heavens like a curtain :" Shaw, Trav. p. 274.
24. If he but blow upon them] The LXX, Syr. Vulg.
and MS Bodl. and another, have Da without the conjunc
tion 1.
28. And that his understanding — ] Twenty-four MSS,
two editions, LXX, and Vulg. read pxi, with the conjunc
tion 1.
31. They shall put forth fresh feathers.] It has been a
common and popular opinion, that the eagle lives and re
tains his vigour to a great age ; and that, beyond the com
mon lot of other birds, he moults in his old age, and renews
his feathers, and with them his youth. " Thou shalt renew
thy youth like the eagle," says the Psalmist, ciii. 5. ; on which
place St Ambrose notes, " Aquila longara astatera ducit,
dura, vetustis plumis fatiscentibus, nova pennarura succes-
sione juvenescit." Phile, de Animalibus, treating of the
eagle, and addressing hiraself to the Emperor Michael
Palfeologus junior, raises his compliment upon the same
notion : —
TotiToy ru, ISx<ri)\iv, roy jroAuii l^aoi; /3ioy,
All yiov^yav, xxi x^xrnyay rm (pv<riy.
Long may' St thou live, O king ; still like the eagle
Renew thy youth, and still retain thy vigour.
To this many fabulous and absurd circumstances are added
by several ancient -writers and comraentators on Scripture :
see Bochart, Hieroz. II. ii. 1. Whether the notion of the
eagle's renewing his youth is in any degree well founded or
not, I need not inquire ; it is enough for a poet, whether
profane or sacred, to have the authority of popular opinion
to support an iraage introduced for illustration or ornaraent.

CHAPTER XLL
1 . — repair to me with new sentiments] iyxxiyi(ia-h, LXX,
For iil?iinn, be silent, they certainly read in their copy
lli?iinn, be renewed ; which is paraUel and synonyraous with
na iBibni, recover their strength ; that is, their strength of
mind, their powers of reason ; that they may overcome those
prejudices by which they have been so long held enslaved
to idolatry. A MS has in upon a rasure. The sarae rais-

320 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLL
take seems to have been made in this word, Zeph, iii. 17. :
for inanxa ii?iini, " silebit in dilectione sua," as the Vul
gate renders it, which seems not consistent with what im
mediately follows, " exultabit super te in laude ;" LXX and
Syr. read inanxa ii?iini, " renovabitur in amore suo."
2. — the righteous man.] The Chald. and Vulg. seem to
have read pii2. But Jerom, though his translation has
justum, appears to have read pi 2; for in his corament he
expresses it hy justum, sivejustitiam. However, I think all
interpreters understand it of a person. So the LXX, in
MS Pachom. ixxxmy xuroy, but the other copies have xurvy.
They are divided in ascertaining this person : some explain
it of Abraham ; others of Cyrus. I rather think that the
former is meant; because the character of the righteous
man, or righteousness, agrees better with Abraham than with
Cyrus. Besides, imraediately after the description of the suc
cess given by God to Abraham and his posterity, (who, I
presume, are to be taken into the account), the idolaters are
introduced as greatly alarmed at this event, Abraham was
caUed out of the east; and his posterity were introduced
into the land of Canaan, in order to destroy the idolaters of
that country; and they were established there, on purpose
to stand as a barrier against idolatry, then prevaUing, and
threatening to overrun the whole face of the earth, Cyrus,
though not properly an idolater, or worshipper of iraages,
yet had nothing in his character to cause such an alarm
among the idolaters, ver, 5 — 7, Further, after having just
touched upon that circumstance, the Prophet with great ease
returns to his former subject, and resumes Abrahara and the
Israelites ; . and assures thera, that as God had called them,
and chosen thera for this purpose, he would uphold and
support thera to the utmost, and at length give them victory
over all the heathen nations, their enemies; ver, 8 — 16,
Ibid, — made them like the dust — ] The image is strong
and beautiful : it is often made use of by the sacred poets ;
see Psal, i, 4, xxxv, 5, Job xxi, 18, and by Isaiah himself in '
other places, chap, xvii, 13, xxix, 5. But there is great
difficulty in making out the construction. The LXX read
Dn'ii?p, Dam, their sword, their bow, understanding it of the
sword and bow of the conquered kings; but this is not so
agreeable to the analogy of the iraage, as eraployed in other
places. The Chaldee Paraphrast and Kirachi solve the dif
ficulty by supposing an ellipsis of i3Sb before those words.

Chap. XLI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 321
It must be owned, that the eUipsis is hard and unusual : but
I choose rather to submit to this, than, by adhering with
Vitringa to the more obvious construction, to destroy entirely
both the image and the sense. But the Vulgate by gladio
ejus, and arcui ejus, seems to express iamb and inii?pb;
the admission of which reading may perhaps be thought
preferable to Kimchi's ellipsis,
3. — he passeth in safety] The preposition seems to have
been omitted in the text by mistake : LXX and Vulg, seem
to have had it in their copies; ly np^vyri, in pace, Dibii?a,
4, — and made these things] A word is here lost out of
the text. It is suppUed by an ancient MS, nbx, these
things ; and by LXX, rxvrx ; and by Vulg, haec .- and by
Chald, pbx,
5, — and they were terrified] Three MSS have nmii,
adding the conjunction i, which restores the second meraber
of the sentence to its true poetical forra,
7, — that it shall not move.] Five MSS (two ancient),
and the ancient versions, add the conjunction i, reading
xbi ; which seems to be right,
9. —from the extremities thereof] nibisxra : bi2X signi
fies the arm, axUla, ala; and is used like «iaa, the wing, for
any thing extended from the extremity of another, or joined
on to it. It is here paraUel and synonymous to niifpra,yro?w
the ends, in the preceding member,
15. — a threshing wain, — a corn-drag] See note on
chap, xxviii, 27, 28,
19, In the wilderness I will give the cedar] The two
preceding verses express God's mercy to them in their pas
sage through the dry deserts, in supplying thera with abun
dant water, when distressed with thirst, in aUusion to the
Exodus ; this - verse expresses the relief afforded to thera,
fainting with heat in their journey through that hot country,
destitute of shelter, by causing shady trees, and those of the
tallest and most beautiful kinds, to spring up for their de
fence. The apocryphal Baruch, speaking of the return
from Babylon, expresses God's protection of his people by
the same image : " Even the woods and every sweet smell
ing tree shall overshadow Israel by the commandment of
God;" chap, v, 8, ^, ,
20,  and may consider — ] The verb iraiii?i, without ab
added, cannot signify to apply the heart, or to attend to a
thino-, as Houbigant has observed : he therefore reads irau?i,

322 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLL
they shall imnder. The conjecture is ingenious : but it is
much raore probable that the word ab is lost out of the
text ; for all the ancient versions render the phrase to the
same sense, as if it were fully expressed, ab iraili?i; and the
Chaldee renders it paraphrasticaUy, yet still retaining the
very words in his paraphrase, pnab br inbni piwii, " ut
ponant timorem meum in corde suo," See also ver, 22,
where the same phrase is used,
21, Produce these your mighty powers] " Accedant, in-
quit, idola vestra, quae putatis esse fortissima:" Hieron,
Cora, in loc, I prefer this to all other interpretations of
this place, and to Jerom's own translation of it, which he
adds immediately after, " Afferte, si quid forte habetis,"
The false gods are called upon to come forth, and appear
in person ; and to give evident demonstration of their fore
knowledge and power, by foretelling future events, and
exerting their power in doing good or evil,
23, — and terror] The word X131 is -written imperfectly
in the Hebrew text : the Masoretes supply n at the end ;
and so it is read in twenty-two MSS, and four editions :
that is, nxiai, and we shall see. But the true reading seems
to be xiiai, and we shaliy^ar, with i supplied, from Xii,
24, — than nought] For rsxra, read DSxra ; so Chald,
and Vulg, A manifest error of the text : compare chap,
xl, 17, The Rabbins acknowledge no such error; but say,
that the former word signifies the same -with the latter, by a
change of the two letters D and r : Sal, b, Melech in loc,
25, — he shall trample — ] For xai, Le Clerc reads oai,
from the Chaldee, who seems to read both words, " Forte
legend. Dail, vel D«iii; sequitur D :" Secker. See Na
hum iii. 14.
27. I first to Sion — ] This verse is somewhat obscure by
the transposition of the parts of the sentence, and the peculiar
manner in which it is divided into two paraUel lines. The
verb at the end of the sentence belongs to both parts ; and
the phrase. Behold, they are here ! is parallel to the messen
ger of glad tidings ; and stands, like it, as the accusative
case to the verb. The foUowing paraphrase will explain
the form and the sense of it : "I first, by ray Prophets, give
notice of these events, saying, Behold, they are at hand !
and I give to Jerusalera a messenger of glad tidings."
28. And among the idols — ] For nbxni, Iread Dnxrai with
the LXX, x«i «7ro T«» eiJwAai)/. SeeExod.xv.il. Isa. Ivii. 5.

Chap. XLII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 323

CHAPTER XLIL
The Prophet, having opened his subject with the pre
paration for the return from captivity at Babylon, and
intimated that a much greater deliverance was covered un
der the veil of that event; proceeded to vindicate the power
of God, as creator and disposer of all things ; and his infi
nite knowledge, from his prediction of future events, and in
particular of that deUverance, He went still further, and
pointed out the instrument by which he should effect the
redemption of his people the Jews frora slavery, namely, a
great conqueror, whom he would call forth from the north
and the east to execute his orders. In this chapter he pro
ceeds to the greater deliverance ; and at once brings forth
into full view, without throwing any veil of allegory over the
subject, the Messiah, " Behold, my servant, Messiah,"
says the Chaldee, St Matthew has applied it directly to
Christ ; nor can it with any justice or propriety be applied
to any other person or character whatever,
I, And he shall publish judgment] Four MSS (two an
cient) add the conjunction aswrai. See Matt, xii, 18,
The word asil?ra, judgment, like npis, righteousness, is
taken in a great latitude of signification. It means rule,
form, order, model, plan ; rule of right, or of religion ; an
ordinance, institution ; judicial process, cause, trial, sen
tence, condemnation, acquittal, deliverance, mercy, &c. It
certainly raeans in this place the law to be published by
Messiah ; the institution of the gospel,
4, His force shall not be abated nor broken] " Rabbi
Meir ita citat locum istum, ut post yni addat ima, robur
ejus, quod hodie non coraparet in textu Hebrffio, sed ad
dendum ridetur, ut sensus fiat planior :" Capell, Crit, Sac,
p, 382, For which reason I had added it in the transla
tion, before I observed this remark of CapeUus,
6. a covenant to the people] For Dr, two MSS read
Dbir, the covenant of the age to come, or the everlasting co
venant ; which seems to give a clearer and better sense.
7. To open the eyes of the blind — ] In this verse the
Prophet seems to set forth the spiritual redemption, under
images borrowed from the temporal deliverance.
Ibid. — and from the dungeon — ] The LXX, Syr, and
four MSS (one ancient), add the conjunction i, niarai.

321 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLIL
10. Ye that go down upon the -sea] This seems not to
belong to this place ; it does not well consist with what fol
lows, " and the fulness thereof," They that go down upon
the sea, means navigators, sailors, traders, such as do busi
ness in great waters : an idea much too confined for the
Prophet, who means the sea in general, as it is used by the
Hebrews, for the distant nations, the islands, the dwellers
on the sea-coasts all over the wOrld, I suspect that some
transcriber had the 23d verse of Psal, cvii, running in his
head, nvaxa Din mv; and wrote in this place Din mv
instead of Din Drii, or riii, or pi ; " let the sea roar, or
shout, or exult," But as this is so different in appearance
from the present reading, I do not take the liberty of in
troducing it into the translation, " Conjeceram legendum
11131, ut ver, 12,; sed non favent versiones:" Secker,
11, Let the desert — ] The raost uncultivated countries,
and the raost rude and uncivilized people, shall confess and
celebrate with thanksgiving the blessing of the knowledge
of God graciously imparted to them. By the desert is
meant Arabia Deserta ; by the rocky country, Arabia Pe-
traea; by the mountains, probably those celebrated ones,
Paran, Horeb, Sinai, in the sarae country ; to which also
belonged Kedar, a clan of Arabians, dwelling for the most
part in tents : but there were others of them, who inhabited
or frequented cities and villages, as may be collected from
this place of the Prophet, Pietro della Valle, speaking of
the people of Arabia Deserta, says, • " There is a sort of
Arabs of that country called Maedi, who with their herds,
of buffaloes for the most part, sometimes live in the deserts,
and soraetiraes in cities ; from whence they have their narae,
which signifies wandering, going from place to place. They
have no professed homes ; nor are they properly Bedaui, or
Beduui, that is, Deserticoli, who are the most noble among
them, and never abide within waUs, but always go wandering
through the open country with their black tents ; nor are
they properly Hhadesi, as they call those who dwell in cities
and lands with fixed houses : these by the latter are esteemed
ignoble and base ; but by both are considered as of low con
dition :" Viaggi, Parte III, lett, 2,
14, shall I keep silence for ever ?] After Dibrra, in the
copy which the LXX had before thera, followed the word
.Dibrbn, lo-iUTrvio-x UTT ximog' ftii kxi xu o-iUTnio-oftxi ; according tO
MSS Pachom. and i. D. 11, and edition Complut, ; which

Chap. XLIL , NOTES ON ISAIAH. 32.5
word Dbirbn has been omitted in the text by an easy rais
take of a transcriber, because of the siraUitude of the word
preceding, 15, — dry deserts] Instead of Dux, islands, read Dus ; a
very probable conjecture of Houbigant,
16. And through paths—] The LXX, Syr. Vulg. and
nine MSS (two ancient), read niainaai.
Ibid, —will I do for them] Dniii?r : This word so written,
as it is in the text, means. Thou wilt do, in the second per
son : the Masoretes have indeed pointed it for the first per
son ; but the i in the last syllable is absolutely necessary to
distinguish the first person; and so it is written in forty
MSS, Diniwr.
Jarchi, Kimchi, Sal, b, Melech, &C, agree, that the pa.st
time is here put for the future, ini1i?r for nil?rx ; and in
deed the context necessarUy requires that interpretation.
Further, it is to be observed, that DiniTi?r is for Dnb inin?r,
/ have done them, for / have done for them ; as ia niii?r is for
lb inill?r, I have made myself, for I have made for myself;
Ezek, xxix, 3, : and in the celebrated passage of Jephthah's
vow, Judges xi, 31, nbir ininibrni, for nbir ib inibrn,
/ will offer him a burnt-offering, for IwiU offer unto him (that
is, unto Jehovah) a burnt-offering; by an ellipsis of the
preposition, of which Buxtorff gives many other examples,
Thes, Grararaat, lib, ii. 17, See also note on chap, Ixv, 5,
A late happy application of this graramatica;l reraark to that
much disputed passage, has perfectly cleared up a difficulty
which for two thousand years had puzzled all the translators
and expositors, had given occasion to dissertations without
number, and caused endless disputes among the learned, on
the question, whether Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, or
not : in which both parties have been equally ignorant of
the meaning of the place, of the state of the fact, and of the
very terms of the vow ; which now at last has been cleared
up "beyond all doubt by my very learned friend Dr Ran
dolph, Margaret Professor of Dirinity in the university of
Oxford, in his serraon on Jephthah's vow; Oxford, 1766,
19, — as he, to whom Ihave sent my messengers.] laxbraa
nbii?x, " ut ad quem nuncios meos misi;" Vulg, Chald,;
alraost the only interpreters who render it rightly, in con
sistence with the rest of the sentence, and in perfect agree
ment with the Hebrew idiom ; according to which the ellipsis
is to be thus supplied, nbii?x laxbra iii?xba,
B b

326 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLII.
Ibid, — as he that is perfectly instructed] See note on
chap, xliv, 2,
Ibid, And deaf as the servant of Jehovah] For iiri,
and blind, we must read urini, and deaf: xaipog, Symmachus ;
and so MS, The mistake is palpable, and the correction
self-erident; and admissible, though there had been no au
thority for it,
20, Thoit hast seen indeed] The text has mai nixi,
which the Masoretes in the marginal Keri have corrected to
mai mxi ; as indeed a hundred and seven MSS, and five
editions, now have it in the text. This was probably the
reading of most of the MSS in their time ; which, though
they approved of it, out of some superstition they would not
adrait into their standard text. But these wretched critics,
though they perceived there was some fault, yet did not
know where the fault lay, nor consequently how to amend
it; and yet it was open enough to a judicious eye: " mai,
sic veteres; et tamen forte legendum, mxi : vide cap. vi.
9:" Secker. That is, mxi nixi. I believe no one will
doubt of admitting this as the true reading.
Ibid, —yet thou wilt not hear] For rraii?*, read rrawn,
in the second person ; so all the ancient versions, and forty
MSS (four of them ancient), and perhaps five more. Two
others have irraiwn, second person, plural.
21. — his own praise] For niin, the LXX read mm,
22, — are taken in the toils] For nsn, read insm, in
the plural number, Hophal; as ixann, which answers to it
in the following member of the sentence : Le Clerc, Houbi
gant, nsn, Secker,
24. — they have sinned] For I3xan, first person, LXX
and Chald. read ixtan, in the third person.
25. — the heat of his wrath] For nran, the Bodley MS
has nran, in regimine ; more regularly.

CHAPTER XLIIL
1. I have called thee by thy name] ^r3^l?a inxip. " Sic
versiones, Videtur ex versu septirao et reipsa legendum
iiaii?a •] inxip, [vocavi te meo nomine]; nam saspe usurpa-
tur haec phrasis, nunquara altera. Nam xlv, 24, de Cyro
alia res est, Sed dura Deus Jacobum Israelem vocat, Dei
nomine vocat. Vide Exod, xxxi, 2," Secker,

Chap. XLIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 327
3, / have given Egypt for thy ransom] This is commonly
supposed to refer to the time of Senacherib's invasion ; who,
when he was just ready to faU upon Jerusalem, soon after
his entering Judea, was providentially diverted from that
design, and turned his arms against the Egyptians, and their
aUies the Cushean Arabians, with their neighbours the Sa
beans probably joined with them, under Tirhakah, See
chap, XX. and xxxvii. 9. Or, as there are some reasonable
objections to this opinion, perhaps it may mean more gene
rally, that God had often saved his people at the expense of
other nations, whom he had, as it were in their stead, given
up to destruction. Vitringa explains this of Shalmaneser's
designs upon the kingdora of Judea, after he had destroyed
that of Saraaria; from which he was diverted by carrying
the war agamst the Egyptians, Cusheans, and Sabeans ; but
of this, I think, he has no clear proof in history. It is not
to be wondered, that many things of this kind should re
main very obscure for want of the light of history, which in
regard to these times is extreraely deficient.
" Did not Cyrus overcome these nations ? and might they
not be given him for releasing the Jews ? It seeras to have
been so frora chap. xlv. 14 :" Secker.
7. Whom for my glory — ] Ten MSS (three ancient),
Syr. and Vulg. read iliaab, -without the conjunction i.
8. Bring forth the people blind — ] I understand this of
the GentUes, as the verse foUowing, not of the Jews. Their
natural faculties, if they had made a proper use of them,
must have led them to the knowledge of the being and attri
butes of the one true God; " for his eternal power and
godhead, if well attended to, are clearly seen in his works ;"
Rom. i. 20. ; and would have preserved them from running
into the folly and absurdity of worshipping idols. They are
here challenged to produce the evidence of the power and
foreknowledge of their idol-gods; and the Jews are just
afterward, ver. 10. appealed to as witnesses for God in this
cause : therefore these latter cannot here be meant by the
people blind with eyes, and deaf with .ears.
9. Who among them — ] Seven MSS (three ancient),
and the first edition, 1486, with Syr. and Vulg. read Daa,
who among you. The present reading is preferable.
14. —the Chaldeans exulting in tlieir ships] Babylon
was very advantageously situated, both in respect to com
merce and as a naval power. It was open to the Persian

328 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLIII.
Gulf by the Euphrates, which was navigable by large ves
sels ; and being joined to the Tigris above Babylon by the
canal called Naharraalca, or the Royal River, suppUed the
city with the produce of the whole country to the north of
it, as far as the Euxine and Caspian Seas: Herod, i, 194,
Serairamis was the foundress of this part also of the Baby
lonian , greatness : she improved the navigation of the
Euphrates; Herod, i, 184, Strabo, lib, xvi, ; and is said to
have had a fleet of three thousand gallies : Huet, Hist, du
Commerce, chap, xi. We are not to wonder, that in later
times we hear little of the commerce and naval power of
Babylon ; for, after the taking of the city by Cyrus, the
Eiaphrates was not only rendered less fit for navigation, by
being on that occasion diverted from its course, and left to
spread over the whole country, but the Persian monarchs,
residing in their own country, to prevent any invasion by
sea on that part of their empire, purposely obstructed the
narigation of both the rivers, by making cataracts in them ;
Strabo, ibid, ; that is, by raising dams across the channel, and
making artificial falls in them, that no vessel of any size or
force could possibly come up, Alexander began to restore
the navigation of the rivers by demolishing the cataracts
upon the Tigris as far up as Seleucia ; Arrian, lib, vii, ; but
he did not live to finish his great designs : those upon the
Euphrates still continued, Amraianus, xxiv, 1, mentions
them as subsisting in his time.
The Prophet therefore might very justly speak of the
Chaldeans as glorying in their naval power in his time,
though afterward they had no foundation for making any
.such boast.
15, The Creator of Israel] For xiia, creator, six MSS
(two ancient) have inbx, God.
20, The wild beast of th'k field shall glorify me — ] The
image is elegant and highly poetical, God will give such an
abundant miraculous supply of water to his people traversing
the dry desert, in their return to their country, that even the
wild beasts, the serpents, the ostriches, and other animals
that haunt those adust regions, shall be sensible of the bless
ing ; and shall break forth into thanksgiving and praises to
hira for the unusual refreshraent, which they receive from
his so plentifully watering the sandy wastes of Arabia De
serta, for the benefit of his people passing through them,
22 — 24, But thou hast not invoked — ] The connexion

Chap. XLIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. .320
is — But thou, Israel, whom I have chosen, whom I have
formed for myself, to be my witness against the false gods
of the nations ; even thou hast revolted from me, hast ne
glected my worship, and hast been perpetually running after
strange gods. The emphasis of this and the following parts
of the sentence, on which the sense depends, seems to lie on
the words Me, on My account, &c. The Jews were dUi-
gent in performing the external services of religion ; in of
fering prayers, incense, -sacrifices, oblations : but their pray
ers were not offered with faith; and their oblations were
made more frequently to their idols than to the God of their
fathers. The Hebrew idiom excludes vrith a general nega
tive, in a comparative sense, one of two objects opposed to
one another : thus, " I will have mercy, and not sacrifice ;"
Hosea vi, 6, " For I spake not to your fathers, nor com
manded them — concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices ; but
this thing I commanded thera, saying. Obey my voice;"
Jer, vii, 22, 23, And the raeaning of this place of Isaiah
seems to be much the same with that of Amos ; who however
has explained at large both parts of the comparison, and
specified the false service opposed to the true : —
" Have ye offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings
In the wUderness forty years, O house of Israel ?
Nay, but ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch,
And Chiun, your images ;
The star of your God, which you made to yourselves,"
Amos V, 25, 26,
22, Neither hast thou laboured—] For nrai ia, LXX
and Vulg, read nrail : Houbigant, The negative is re
peated, or referred to, by the conjunction i ; as in many
other places. See note on chap, xxiU, 4,
20, And thy princes have profaned — ] Instead of bb nxi
1111?, read Tiiii? ibbnii. So Syr, and LXX, ;f«( iftixyxy o<
«5;kovte5 rx xyix ftov, ii2?ip : Houbigant, 'Oi x^^''^ o-ou, MSS
Pachom, and i, D, ii, and Marchal,
Ibid, — to reproach.] nsnab, in the singular number;
so an anciept MS, and LXX, Syr, Vulg,

CHAPTER XLIV,
2, Jeshurun means Israel. This name was given to that
people by Moses, Deut, xxxii, 15, xxxin, 5, and 26, The

330 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLIV.
most proljable account of it seems to be that in which the
Jewish commentators agree ; namely, that it is derived from,
iii?i, and signifies upright. In the same raanner, Israel, as
a people, is called Dbwra, perfect, chap, xiii, 19, They were
taught of God, and abundantly furnished with the means of
rectitude and perfection in his service and worship,
4. — as the grass among the tvaters] iisn paa, "They
shall spring up in the midst of, or rather, in among, the
grass." This cannot be right : ten MSS, and two editions,
have paa, or ^aa. Twenty-four MSS read it without the
1, pa; and so reads the Chaldee; the Syriac, para. The
true reading is in all probability paa ; and the word Dira,
which should have foUowed it, is lost out of the text ; but it
is happily supplied by the LXX : as xyx ftso-ov i^xro;:, " In
every place where there is water, there is always grass ; for
water makes every thing grow in the East :" Sir John Char
din's note on 1 Kings xviii, 5. ; Harmer's Observ. i. p. 54.
5. — shall be called] Passive, Nipi, xxvirnrirxi, Symma
chus. Ibid. And this shall inscribe his hand to Jehovah] k«(
Itejo; iTTiy^x^ii ^it^i (jiii^x, Aq. Sym.) oeuTotr, TOU ©sow £ifc( : " Aud
another shall write upon his hand, I belong to God :" LXX.
They seem to have read here, as before, lax ninib. But
the repetition of the same phrase without any variation is
not elegant. However, they seem to have understood it
rightly as an allusion to the marks which were made, by
punctures rendered indelible by fire or by staining, upon
the hand or some other part of the body, signifying the state
or character of the person, and to whom he belonged : the
slave was marked with the name of his master ; the soldier,
of his comraander ; the idolater, with the name or ensign of
his god : '^lyfixrx i-priy^xipoftiyx, oix ray i-^xnvofiiyaii i> rxi; yfq^'riy :
Aetius apud Turnebum Advers. xxiv. 12, " Victuris in
cute punctis mUites scripti et matriculis inserti jurare solent :"
Vegetius, ii, 5, And the Christians seem to have imitated
this practice, by what Procopius says on this place of Isaiah :
To 61 THf XEIPI, S(« TO s-(^si» nra; 7roX>\.ov; i7ti xx^Tem, ti /8ga;g(o»»j, »
Tov ^xv^ov TO truifiiiot, f) rmy X^itov 7r^oo-»yo^ixy ; " BecaUSC many
marked their wrists, or their arms, with the sign of the
cross, or with the name of Christ," See Rev, xx, 4,
Spencer, De Leg, Hebr, lib, ii. cap. 20.
7, — let them declare unto us] For irab, unto them, the
Chaldee reads lab, unto xis. The LXX read raab, unto you;

Chap, XLIV, NOTES ON ISAIAH, 331
which is preferable to the reading of the text. But irab and
13b are frequently mistaken one for the other : see chap, x.
29. Psal. lxxx. 7. lxiv, 6.
8, Fear ye not — ] " mm nusquam occurrit : forte
ixiin, timete :" Secker, Two MSS read inim,
9, 10. That every, one may be ashamed, that he hath
formed a god] The Bodleian MS, one of the first ex
tant for its antiquity and authority, instead of iQ at th£
beginning of the lOth verse has ia, which greatly clears up
the construction of a very obscure passage, "The LXX
Ukewise closely connect in construction the end of ver, 9,
with the beginning of ver, 10, and wholly omit the interro
gative ira, which embarrasses the sentence : xio-^cwho-oyrxi ot
CT/oso-rovTS; &ioy, xxi yXv(poyns -m-xvri; xya(f>sM. agreeably tO the
reading of the MS above-mentioned,
11. Even the workmen themselves shall blush] Ldo not
know, that any one has ever yet interpreted these words to
any tolerably good sense : Dixra nran Diii?mi. The Vul-»
gate, and our translators, have rendered them very fairly,
as they are written and pointed in the text : " Fabri enim
sunt ex honunibus :" " And the worlanen, they are of men."
Out of which the commentators have not been able to ex
tract any thing worthy of the Prophet. I have given an
other explanation of the place; agreeable enough to the
context, if it can be deduced from the words themselves. I
presume, that Dix, rubuit, may signify erubuit, to be red
through shame, as well as from any other cause ; though I
cannot produce any exaraple of it in that particular sense :
and the word in the text I would point D-lxra ; or if any
one should object to the irregularity of the number, I would
read Diratxra. But I rather think, that the irregularity of
the construction has been the cause of the obscurity, and
has given occasion to the mistaken punctuation. The sin
gular is sometimes put for the plural ; see Psal. Ixviu. 31. ;
and the participle for the future tense; see Isa. Ix. 11.
12. —cutteth off—] i??rn, participium pihel of isr, to
cut ; StUl used in that sense in the Arabic. See Simonis
Lex. Heb. The LXX and Syr. take the word in this form;
but they render it, sharpeneth the iron. See Castell. Lex.
in voce.
The sacred writers are generally large and eloquent upon
the subject of idolatry : they treat it vrith great severity, and
set forth the absurdity of it in the strongest light. But this

332 ¦ NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLIV.
passage of Isaiah, ver. 12 — 20. far exceeds any thing that
ever was written upon the subject, in force of argument,
energy of expression, and elegance of composition. One
or two of the apocryphal writers have attempted to imitate
the Prophet, but with very ill success; Wisd. xiii. II — 19.
XV. 7, &c. Baruch, chap, vi, ; especially the latter, who,
injudiciously dUating his matter, and introducing a number
of minute circumstances, has very much weakened the force
and effect of his invective. On the contrary, a heathen au
thor, in the ludicrous way, has, in a line or two, given ido
latry one of the severest strokes it ever received : —
" Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum ;
Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum,
Maluit esse Deum," Horat.
14. He heweth down — ] For mab, the LXX and Vulg.
read nia, or mav .
16. And with part — ] Twenty-three MSS, LXX, and
Vulg, add the conjunction i, bri-
18. — their eyes are closed up] The LXX, Chald. and
Vulg. for na read ma. See note on chap. vi. 10.
20, He feedeth on ashes] He feedeth on that which af-
fordeth no nourishraent : a proverbial expression for using
ineffectual means, and bestowing labour to no purpose. In
the same sense Hosea says, " Ephraim feedeth on wind,"
chap, xii, 1,
22, / have made thy transgressions vanish away like a
cloud, and thy sins like a vapour.] Longinus admired the
sublimity of the sentiment, as well as the harmony of the
numbers, in the following sentence of Demosthenes : Tokto
ro -^vi^ia-fAX rov tote rt} ^s-oXii ssri^t^xvlx xtyevyov z^x^iXQiiy sTroivia-iy uffTrio
yi<pos : " This decree raade the danger then hanging over the
city pass away like a cloud,"
24. — by myself] Thirteen MSS (six ancient), confirra
the reading of the Keri, inxra.
27, Who sayeth to the deep, Be thou wasted] Cyrus took
Babylon by laying the bed of the Euphrates dry, and lead
ing his army into the city by night through the erapty chan
nel of the river. This reraarkable circumstance, in which
the event so exactly corresponded with the prophecy, was
also noted by Jeremiah :
" A drought shall be upon her waters, and they shall be dried up,
I will lay her sea dry ;
And I will scorch up her springs," Jer. 1. 38. Ii. 36,

Chap. XLIV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. .3.33
It is proper here to give sorae account of the means and
method by which the stratagem of Cyrus was effected.
The Euphrates in the middle of summer, from the melt
ing of the snows on the mountains of Armenia, like the Nile,
overflows the country. In order to diminish the inundation,
and to carry off the waters, two canals were made by Ne
buchadnezzar a hundred mUes above the city ; the first on
the eastern side, called Naharraalca, or the royal river, by
which the Euphrates was let into the Tigris ; the other on
the western side, called Pallacopas, or Naharaga, (Dax ma,
the river of the pool), by which the redundant waters were
carried into a vast lake, forty miles square, contrived not
only to lessen the inundation, but for a reservoir, with
sluices, to water the barren country on the Arabian side,
Cyrus, by turning the whole river into the lake by the
Pallacopas, laid the channel, where it ran through the city,
almost dry; so that his army entered it, both above and
below, by the bed of the river, the water not reaching above
the middle of the thigh. By the great quantity of water let
into the lake, the sluices and dams were destroyed ; and
being never repaired afterward, the waters spread over the
whole country below, and reduced it to a morass, in which
the river is lost, " Ingens modo et navigabilis, inde tenuis
rivus, despectus emoritur ; et nusquam manifesto exitu eflluit,
ut aUi omnes, sed deficit:" Mela, ui. 8, Herod, i. 185, 190.
Xenophon. Cyrop. vii, Arrian, vU,
28, Who sayeth to Cyrus, Thou art my shepherd] " Pas
tor raeus es:" Vulg. The true reading seems to be in
nnx; the word nnx has probably been dropt out of the
text. The same word is lost out of the text, Psal. cxix. 57.
It is supplied in LXX by the word u.
Ibid. Who sayeth to Jerusalem] For iraxbi, LXX and
Vulg. read iraixn.
Ibid, —and to the temple] bainbi, as Dbwiiib before ;
the preposition is necessary ; and the Vulgate seems to read
so : Houbigant,
CHAPTER XLV,
1. And ungird the loifis of kings] See note on chap, v,
27, Xenophon gives the following list of the nations con
quered by Cyrus : the Syrians, Assyrians, Arabians, Cappa-
docians, both the Phrygians, Lydians, Carians, Phenicians,

334 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLV.
Babylonians, He moreover reigned over the Bactrians,
Indians, Cilicians, the Sacae, Paphlagones, and Mariandyni :
Cyrop, lib, i, p, 4, edit, Hutchinson, 4to, All these king
doms he acknowledges, in his decree for the restoration of
the Jews, to have been given to him by Jehovah, the God
of heaven : Ezra i, 2,
Ibid, That I may open before him the valves ; and the
gates shall'not be shut.] The gates of Babylon within the
city, leading from the streets to the river, were providen
tially left open, when Cyrus's forces entered the city in the
night through the channel of the river, in the general dis
order occasioned by the great feast which was then cele
brated; otherwise, says Herodotus, i, 191. the Persians would
have been shut up in the bed of the river, and taken as in a
net, and all destroyed : And the gates of the palace were
opened imprudently by the king's orders, to inquire What
was the cause of the tumult without; when the two parties
under Gobrias and Gadatas rushed in, got possession of the
palace, and slew the king : Xenoph. Cyrop. vii. p. 528.
2. — the mountains — ] For Diinn, a word not easUy
accounted for in this place, the LXX read omn, rx ogij.
Two MSS have Dinn, without the i ; which is hardly dis
tinguishable frora the reading of the LXX. The divine pro
tection which attended Cyrus, and rendered his expedition
against Babylon easy and prosperous, is finely expressed by
God's going before hira, and making the mountains level.
The image is highly poetical :
" At vos, qua veniet, tumidi subsidite montes,
Et faciles curvis vaUibus este viae." Ovid. Amor. ii. 16,
Ibid, The valves of brass — ] Abydenus, apud Euseb,
Praep, Evang, ix, 41, says, that the wall of Babylon had
brazen gates. And Herodotus, i, 179, more particularly:
" In the wall all round there are a hundred gates, all of
brass; and so in like manner are the sides and the lintels,"
The gates likewise within the city, opening to the river from
the several streets, were of brass ; as were those also of the
temple of Belus : Id, i, 180, 181,
3. I will give unto thee the treasures of darkness] Sardes
and Babylon, when taken by Cyrus, were the wealthiest
cities in the world, Croesus, celebrated beyond all the kings
of that age for his riches, gave up his treasures to Cyrus,
with an exact account in writing of the whole, containing
the particulars with which each waggon was loaded, when

Chap. XLV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 333
they were carried away ; and they were delivered to Cyrus
at the palace of Babylon : Xenoph, Cyrop, Ub, vu, p, 503,
515, 540,
PUny gives the following account of the wealth taken by
Cyrus in Asia, " Jam Cyrus, devicta Asia, pondo xxxiv
raillia [auri] invenerat; praeter vasa aurea, aururaque fac-
tura, et in eo folia, ac platanura, viteraque, ' Qua victoria
argenti quingenta millia talentorum reportavit ; et craterem
Semiramidis, cujus pondus quindecim talenta coUigebat,
Talentum autem iEgyptiura pondo lxxx patere [1, capere]
Varro tradit :" Nat, Hist, xxxiii, 15,
The gold and silver, estimated by weight in this ac
count, being converted into pounds sterling, amount to
£,126,224,000: Brerewood, De Ponderibus, cap, x,
7, Forming light, and creating . darkness] It was the
great principle of the Magian religion, which prevailed in
Persia in the tirae of Cyrus, and in which probably he was
educated, that there are two suprerae, co-eternal, and inde
pendent Causes, always acting in opposition one to the other ;
one the author of all good, the other of all evil; the good Be
ing they called Light ; the evU Being, Darkness : that, when
light had the ascendant, then good and happiness prevailed
araong men ; whep darkness had the superiority, then evil
and misery abounded : — an opinion that contradicts the
clearest evidence of our reason, which plainly leads us to the
acknowledgment of one only Supreme Being, infinitely good
as well as powerful. With reference to this absurd opinion,
held by the person to whom this prophecy is addressed, God
by his Prophet, in the most significant terms, asserts his om
nipotence and absolute supreraacy :
" I am Jehovah, and none else ;
Forming light, and creating darkness ;
Making peace, and creating evU :
I Jehovah am the author of all these things,"
Declaring, that those Powers whom the Persians held to
be the original authors of good and evil to mankind, repre
senting thera by light and darkness as their proper era
bleras, are no other than creatures of God, the instruments
which he employs in his government of the world, ordained
or permitted by him in order to execute his wise and just
decrees ; and that there is no Power, either of good or evil,
independent of the One Supreme God, infinite in power and
in goodness.

336 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLV.
There were however some among the Persians, whose
sentiments were more moderate as to this matter ; who held
the evil principle to be in some measure subordinate to the
good ; and that the former would at length be wholly sub
dued by the latter: See Hyde, De Relig, Vet. Pers. cap.
xxii. That this opinion prevailed among the Persians as early
as the tirae of Cyrus, we raay, I think, infer, not only frora
this passage of Isaiah, which has a raanifest reference to it,
but likewise from a passage in Xenophon's Cyropaedia,
where the same doctrine is applied to the human mind.
Araspes, a noble young Persian, had faUen in love with the
fair captive Panthea, committed to his charge by Cyrus.
After all his boasting, that he was superior to the assaults of
that passion, he yielded so far to it, as even to threaten
violence, if she would not comply vrith his desires. Awed
by the reproof of Cyrus, fearing his displeasure, and having
by cool reflection recovered his reason ; in his discourse with
hira on this subject he says, " O Cyrus, I have certainly
two souls ; and this piece of philosophy I have learned frora
that wicked sophist Love. For if I had but one soul, it
would not be at the same time good and evil ; it would not
at the same time approve of honourable and base actions ;
and at once desire to do, and refuse to do, the very same
things. But it is plain, that I am aniraated by two souls ;
and when the good soul prevails, I do what is virtuous ; and
when the evil one prevails, I atterapt what is vicious. But
now the good soul preyaUs, having gotten you for her as
sistant, and has clearly gained the superiority :" Lib, vi,
p, 424,
8, Drop down, O ye heavens — ] The eighty-fifth Psalm
is a vei-y elegant ode on the same subject with this part of
Isaiah's prophecies — the restoration of Judah from captivity ;
and is, in the most beautiful part of it, a manifest imitation
of this passage of the Prophet : —
" Verily his salvation is nigh unto them that fear him,
That glory may dwell in our land,
Mercy and truth have met together ;
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring from the earth,
And righteousness shall look down from heaven.
Even Jehovah will give that which is good,
And our land shall yield her produce.

Chap. XLV, NOTES ON ISAIAH. 337
Righteousness shall go before him.
And shall direct his footsteps in the way,"
Psal, Ixxxv. 10-14,
These images of the dew and the rain descending from
heaven, and making the earth fruitful, eraployed by the Pro
phet, and sorae of those nearly of the sarae kind which are
used by the Psalmist, may perhaps be priraarUy understood
as designed to set forth in a splendid raanner the happy state
of God's people restored to their country, and flourishing
in peace and plenty, in piety and virtue : but justice and
salvation, raercy and truth, righteousness and peace, and
glory dwelling in the land, cannot with 'any sort of pro
priety, in the one or the other, be interpreted as the conse
quences of that event ; they raust mean the blessings of the
great redemption by Messiah,
Ibid, — let salvation produce her fruit] For iisii, the
LXX, Vulg, and Syr, read nisii ; and a MS has a rasure
close after the letter i, which probably was n at first,
9, Wo unto him, that contendeth with the power that
formed him] The Prophet answers or prevents the objec
tions and cavUs of the unbelieving Jews, disposed to mur
mur against God, and to arraign the wisdora and justice of
his dispensations in regard to thera ; in permitting them to
be oppressed bj^ their eneraies, and in promising them de
liverance instead of preventing their captivity, St Paul
has borrowed the image, and has applied it to the like pur-
' pose -with equal force and elegance : " Nay, but, O raan !
who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing-
formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me
thus ? Hath not the potter power over the clay, out of the
same lump to make one vessel to honour, and another to
dishonour?" Rom, ix, 20, 21,
Ibid, — and to the workman. Thou hast no hands] The
Syr. renders as ifhe had read ^ili brs imn xbi, " Neither
am I the work of thy hands ;" the LXX, as if they had
read, lb Dni pxi nbrs xbi, " Neither hast thou made rae ;
and thou hast no hands," But the fault seeras to be in the
transposition of the two pronouns: for -fbrsi read ibrsi ;
and for lb read ^b, So Houbigant corrects it, reading
also ibrabi ; which last correction seems not altogether
necessary. The LXX in MSS Pachom, and i, D, ii, have
it thus : XXl TO e^yov, ovx ixu', xi^^t-i i whJch favours the reading
here proposed.

338 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLV.
II, And he that formeth the things which are to come] I
read isvi, without the i suffixed, from the LXX, who join it
in construction with the following word ; i itomtra^ rx im^x'l*-^"^-
Ibid, Do ye question me — ] " i3ibxii?n, Chald, recte :
praecedit n ; et sic forte legerunt reliqui Intt, :" Secker,
14, The wealth of Egypt — ] This seems to relate to the
future admission of the Gentiles into the church of God,
Compare Psal, Ixviu, 32, Ixxii, 10, chap. Ix. 6 — 9. And
perhaps these particular nations may be named, by a me
tonymy common in all poetry, for powerful and wealthy
nations in general. See note on chap. Ix, 1,
Ibid, The Sabeans tall of stature — ] That the Sabeans
were of a more majestic appearance than comraon, is par
ticularly remarked by Agatharchides, an ancient Greek his
torian quoted by Bochart, Phaleg, ii, 26, rx o-oifixrx ifi ray
xxloixovylay x^iohoyals^x. So also the LXX understand it, ren
dering it flsvJ^e; iif-^Aoi, And the same phrase, nira lu^ix, is
used for persons of extraordinary stature, Numb, xiii, 32,
and 1 Chron, xx, 6,
Ibid, — and in suppliant guise — ] The conjunction 1 is
supplied by the ancient versions, and confirmed by fifteen
-MSS (seven ancient), and six editions, "jibxi. Three MSS
(two ancient)', omit the i before ^ibx at the beginning of the
line, 16, They are ashamed — ] The reader cannot but ob
serve the sudden transition from the solemn adoration of
the secret and mysterious nature of God's counsels, in re
gard to his people, to the spirited denunciation of the con
fusion of idolaters, and the final destruction of idolatry;
contrasted with the salvation of Israel, not from temporal
captivity, but the eternal salvation by Messiah, strongly
raarked by the repetition and augmentation of the phrase,
to the ages of eternity. But there is not only a sudden
change in the sentiment ; the change is equally observable
in the construction of the sentences ; which frora the usual
short raeasure runs out at once into two distichs of the longer
sort of verse : See Prelim, Dissert, p, xli, &c. There is
another instance of the same kind, and very like to this, of
a sudden transition in regard both to the sentiment and
construction in chap, xiii, 17,
Ibid, — his adversaries, all of them,] This line, to the
great diminution of the beauty of the distich, is imperfect
in the present text; the subject of the proposition is not

Chap. XLV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 339
particularly expressed, as it is in the line foUowing, The
version of the LXX happily supplies the word that is lost ;
01 xyrixiifciyoi xvra: the original word was VIS.
18. —for he formed it to be inhabited] An ancient MS
has ia before naTi?b ; and so the ancient versions.
19. Ihave not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the
earth] In opposition to the manner in which the heathen
oracles gave their answers ; which were generally delivered
from some deep and obscure cavern. Such was the seat pf
the Cumean SybU:
" Excisum Euboicffi latus ingens rupis in antrum,"
Virg, Mn. vi, 42,
Such was that of the famous oracle at Delphi : of which,
says Strabo, lib, 9, ^xc-i S uyxi to ftxtluov xvrgoy xoiMy fiilx /Sxhu;,
ov ftxhx ivgy^oftoy : " The oracle is said to be a hollow cavern
of considerable depth, with an opening not very wide,"
And Diodorus, giving an account of the origin of this oracle,
says, " that there was in that place a great chasm, or cleft,
in the earth ; in which very place is now situated what is
called the Adytum of the temple," aSJIov- a-n-i^xxioy, u to x-a-ox^v-
(poy ftsgo; TOU ii^ov : Hesych, " Adytum means a cavern, or
the hidden part of the temple,"
Ibid, lam Jehovah, who speak truth, who give direct
answers.] This also is said in opposition to the false and
ambiguous answers given by the heathen oracles ; of which
there are many noted examples; none more so than that
of the answer given to Croesus, when he marched against
Cyrus ; which piece of history has some connexion with
tlus part of Isaiah's prophecies. Let us hear Cicero's ac
count of the Delphic answers in general, and of this in
particular, " Sed jam ad te venio,
0-Sancte Apollo, qui umbilicum certum terrarum obsides,
Unde superstitiosa primum saeva evasit vox fera,
Tuis enira oraculis Chrysippus totum voluraen implevit,
partim falsis, ut ego opinor; partim casu veris, ut fit in
omni oratione saepissirae ; partira flexUoquis et pbscuris, ut
interpres egeat interprete, et sors ipsa ad sortes referenda
sit ; partim ambiguis, et quae ad dialecticum deferenda sint,
Nara cum sors iUa edita est opulentissirao regi Asi^,
Crcesus Halym penetrans magnam pervertet opum vim :
hostium vim sese perversurum putavit; pervertit autem
suam, Utrum igitur eorum accidisset, verum oraculura
fuisset :" De Divinat, n, 56,

340 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLV.
21 , —bring them near, and let them consult together] For
isrv, let them consult, the LXX read ins let them know ;
but an ancient MS has nriS " let them come together by
appointment ;" which may probably be the true reading,
23, — truth is gone forth from my mouth ,- The word — ]
So the LXX distinguish the members of the sentence ; pre
serving the elegance of the construction, and the clearness
of the sense,
24, Saying, Only to Jehovah — ] A MS omits ib, unto
me ; and instead of irax ib, he said or shall say unto me,
the LXX read, in the copy which they used, iraxb, saying.
For xai, Jie shall come, in the singular, twelve MSS (three
ancient) read ixai, plural; and a letter is erased at the end
of the word in two others : and so the Alexandrine copy of
the LXX, Syr, and Vulg, read it. For nipi:s, plural, two
MSS read npis, singular; and so LXX, Syr, Chald,

CHAPTER XLVL
1, Their burthens are heavy] For Dainxii?3, your bur
thens, the LXX had in their copy Dninxii?a, their burthens,
2, They could not deliver their own charge] That is,
their worshippers; who ought to have been borne by them.
See the two next verses. The Chaldee and Syriac versions
render it in effect to the same purpose, portantes se, those
that bear them, meaning their worshippers ; but how they
can render xiura in an active sense, I do not understand.
Ibid, Even they thernselves — ] For Dtysai, an ancient
MS has Diysa ia, with more force,
3 — 7, Ye that have been borne by me from the birth — ]
The Prophet very ingeniously, and with great force, con
trasts the power of God, and his tender goodness effectually
exerted towards his people, with the inability of the false
gods of the heathen : He like an indulgent father had car
ried his people in his arms, " as a man carrieth his son ;"
- Deut, i, 31, ; he had protected them, and delivered them from
their distresses : whereas the idols of the heathen are forced
to be carried about themselves, and removed from place to
place, with great labour and fatigue, by their worshippers ;
nor can they answer, or deliver their votaries, when they
cry unto thera,
Moses, expostulating with God on the weight of the

Chap. XLVL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 341
charge laid upon him as leader of his people, expresses that
charge, under the sarae image of a parent's carrying his
children, in very strong terras : " Have I conceived all this
people ? have I begotten thera ? that thou shouldest say
unto me. Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father
beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest
unto their fathers;" Numb, xi. 12.
Pindar has treated with a just and very elegant ridicule
the work of the statuary, even in comparison with his own
poetry, from this circumstance of its being fixed to a certain
station. " The friends of Pytheas, says the Scholiast, came
to the poet, desiring hira to write an ode on his victory.
Pindar deraanded three drachras {mince, I suppose it should
be) for the ode. No, say they, we can have a brazen statue
for that money, which will be better than a poem. How
ever, changing their minds afterwards, they carae and offered
him what he had demanded." This gave hira the hint of
the following ingenious exordiura of his ode : —
OvK xyopixyroTTOio; li^
'Or' iXiyvir<royrx ft' i^-yx^ia--
6x1 ayflcAftisiT tTr' xvrx; l3x6^tdof
EfflCOT. AAA E5r* Tcxa-x;
OAx«B0;, sv T xxxra,
Xroi^' x-TT Aiyiyx; dtxyye?^-
Xoir o-ri Axfoa-uyo; vio;
llviix; Iv^virSivn;
Nixii NSjKEfOif TTxyx^xriy i-i^xyoy. Nem. v.
Thus elegantly translated by Mr Francis in a note to
Hor. Carra. iv. 2, 19,
" It is not mine with forming hand
To bid a lifeless image stand
For ever on its base :
But fly, my verses, and proclaim
To distant realms, with deathless fame,
That Pytheas conquer'd in the rapid race,"
Jereraiah seems to be indebted to Isaiah for raost of the
following passage : — <*
" The practices of the people are altogether vanity ;
For they cut down a tree from the forest ;
The work of the artificer's hand with the axe :
With silver and with gold it is adorned ;
With nails and with hammers it is fastened, that it may
not totter.
Like the palm-tree they stand stiff, and cannot speak ;
Cc

342 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLVI.
They are carried about, for they cannot go :
Fear them not, for they cannot do harm,
Neither is it in them to do good." Jer. x. 3 — 5.
8. — shew yourselves men] iwurxnn. This word is rather
of doubtful derivation and signification. It occurs only in
this place; and some of the ancient interpreters seem to
have had something different in their copies. Vulg. read
ill?ii?ann, take shame to yourselves; Syr. I33iann, consider
with yourselves; LXX, ?-s»»|st6; perhaps ibaxnn, groan,
or mourn, vrithin yourselves.
11. Calling from the east the eagle] A very proper era
blera for Cyrus, as in other respects, so particularly because
the ensign of Cyrus was a golden eagle, aetos x^"'^'"! ; the
very word loir, which the Prophet uses here, expressed as
near as may be in Greek letters. Xenoph. Cyrop. lib. vu.
sub init.
Ibid, And from a land] Two MSS add the conjunction
1) yixrai; and so LXX, Syr, Vulg,

CHAPTER XLVII.
1, Descend, and sit on the dust — ] See note on chap. in.
26. and on chap, Ui, 2.
2, Take the mill, and grind the corn] It was the work
of .slaves to grind the corn. They used hand-mUls : water-
mills were not invented till a little before the time of Augus
tus; (see the Greek epigram of Antipater, which seems to
celebrate it as a new invention : Anthol, Cephalae, 653,);
wind-mills, long after. It was not only the work of slaves,
but the hardest work ; and often inflicted on them as a se
vere punishment,
" Molendum in pistrino ; vapulandum ; habendse compedes,"
Terent, Phormio, ii, 1, 19,
" Hominem pistrino dignum I" Id, Heaut, iii, 2, 19,
But in the East it was the work of the female slaves. See
Exod, xi, 5, xii, 29, (in the version of the LXX), Matt,
xxiv, 41. Homer. Odyss. xx, 105 — 108, And it is the sarae
to this day : " Women alone are eraployed lo grind their
corn f Shaw, Algiers and Tunis, p, 297, " They are the
feraale slaves that are generally eraployed in the East at
those hand-mills [for grinding corn] : it is extremely labo
rious, and esteemed the lowest employment in the house :"
Sir J. Chardin, Harraer's Observ, i. p, 153.

Chap. XLVIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 343
2, I will not suffer man to intercede] The verb should
be pointed, or written, riasx, in Hiphil,
4, Our avenger — ] Here a chorus breaks in upon the
midst of the subject ; with a change of construction, as well
as sentiment, from the longer to the shorter kind of verse,
for one distich only; after which the former subject and
style is resumed, See note on xlv, 16,
6, I was angry with my people — ] God, in the course of
his proridence, makes use of great conquerors and tyrants
as his instruments to execute his judgments in the earth : he
'employs one wicked nation to scourge another. The inflic-
tor of the punishment may perhaps be as culpable as the
sufferer ; and raay add to his guilt by indulging his cruelty
in executing God's justice. When he has fulfilled the work
to which the divine vengeance has ordained him, he will be
come hiraself the object of it. See chap, x, 5 — 12, God
charges the Babylonians, though employed -by himself to
chastise his people, with cruelty in regard to them. They
exceeded the bounds of justice and humanity in oppressing
and destroying them ; and though they were really executing
the righteous decree of God, yet, as far as it regarded them
selves, they were only indulging their own ambition and
violence. The Prophet Zechariah sets this raatter in the
same light : " I was but a little angry, and they helped for
ward the affliction;" chap. i. 15.
7. Because thou didst not — ] For ir read br ; so two
MSS, and one edition. And for nnimx, the latter end of
it, read Tnimx, thy latter end: so thirteen MSS, and two
editions, and Vulg.
9. On a sudden — ] \nsteadiQf'a'a'r\'2, in their perfection,
as our translation renders it, the LXX and Syr. read, in
the copies from which they translated, Dxns, suddenly ;
parallel to rai, in a moment, in the preceding alternate mem
ber of the sentence. The concurrent testimony of LXX
and Syr,, favoured by the context, may be safely opposed to
the authority of the present text.
Ibid, Notwithstanding the multitude — ] aia; for this
sense of the particle a, see Numb, xiv, 11,
11. — how to deprecate] nmu? : so the Chaldee renders
it ; which is approved by Jarchi on the place, and Michaelis
Epira, in Prfelect, xix, ; see Psal, Ixxviii, 34,
Ibid, " Videtur in fine [hujus coramatis] deesse verbum,
ut hoc membrum prioribus respondeat :" Secker,

344 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLVII.
In order to set in a proper light this judicious remark, it
is necessary to give the reader an exact verbal translation of
the whole verse : —
" And evil shall come upon thee, thou shalt not know how to
deprecate it ;
And mischief shall fall upon thee, thou shalt not be able to
expiate it ;
And destruction shall come suddenly upon thee, thou shalt
not know" 
What ? how to escape, to avoid it, to be delivered from it ;
(perhaps narara nxs, Jer, xi, 11,) I ara persuaded, that a
phrase is here lost out of the text. But as the ancient ver
sions retain no traces of it, and a wide field lies open to un
certain conjecture, I have not atterapted to fill up the chasm ;
but have in the translation, as others have done before rae,
palliated and disguised the defect, which I cannot with any
assurance pretend to supply,
13, What are tke events — ] For iwxra, read iii?X nra ;
so the LXX,
15. — to his own business] iiarb. Expositors give no
very good account of this word in this place. In a MS it
was at first iiarb, which is probably the true reading. The
sense however is pretty much the sarae with the common
interpretation.
CHAPTER XLVIII,
1, Ye that ^ow from the fountain of Judah] irara, from
the waters. " Perhaps irrara, from the bowels, [so raany
others have conjectured], or [mini] i^-^^ or ntin^TO, from
Judah ;" Secker, But see Michaelis in Prelect, not, 22,
And we have apri yv, the fountain of Jacob, Deut, xxxiii,
28, and bxni?i iiprara, from the fountain of Israel, Psal, IxvUi,
27. Twenty-seven MSS, and three editions, have iraira,
from the days ; which makes no good sense.
6. — behold, the whole is accomplished] For nrn, see, a
MS has nrn, this; thou hast heard the whole of this: the
Syriac has nnni, thou hast heard, and thou hast seen, the
whole. Perhaps it should be n3n, behold. In order to
express the full sense, I have rendered it soraewhat para
phrasticaUy, 9, And for the sake of my praise] I read inbnn ^riabi.
The word irrab, though not absolutely necessary here, for

Chap. XLVIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 345
it raay be understood as supplied frora the preceding mera
ber, yet seems to have been removed from hence to ver. 1 1. ;
where it is redundant, and where it is not repeated, in
LXX, Syr. and a MS. I have therefore oraitted it in the
latter place, and added it here.
10. / have tried thee — ] For ^1n1na, I have chosen
thee, a MS has "[inana, I have tried thee. And so perhaps
read the Syriac and Chaldee interpreters : they retain the
sarae word inina; but in those languages it signifies, I
have tried thee. *lDaa, quasi argentum, Vulg.
11. for how would my name be blasphemed ?] The word
Iran?, my name, is dropt out of the text : it is supplied by a
MS which has irau?; and by LXX, "¦'¦' " iftoy oyofix ^iZ-nXyrxi.
The Syr. and Vulg. get over the difficulty, by making the
verb in the first person, that / may not be blasphemed.
12. — O Jacob, my servant] After aprs a MS, and the
two old editions of 1486 and 1488, add the word nar,
Which is lost out of the present text ; and there is a rasure
in its place in another ancient MS. 'The Jerusalem Talmud
has the sarae word.
Ibid. For lax t)X, even I, two ancient MSS, and the an
cient versions, read i3Xl, and I; more properly.
14. Who among you — ] For Dna, among them, twenty-
one MSS (nine ancient), and two editions (one of them
that of the year 1488), have Daa, among you; and so the
Syriac. Ibid. He, whom Jehovah hath loved, will execute] That
is, Cyrus : so Symraachus has well rendered it ; 'Oy o Kv^io;
yiyxTTi/iffi, ^oiYiVii ro ^iXvtfix xvrov.
Ibid. — on the Chaldeans] The preposition is lost ; it is
suppUed in the edition of 1486, which has Dim?aa ; and so
Chald. and Vulg.
16. Draw near unto me, and hear ye this] After the
word laip, draw near, a MS adds Diia, O ye nations;
which, as this and the two preceding verses are plainly ad
dressed to the idolatrous nations, reproaching their gods as
unable to predict future events, is probably genuine.
Ibid. — and hear — ] A MS adds the conjunction,
irraii?i ; and so LXX, Syr. Vulg.
Ibid. — / have not spoken in secret] The Alexandrine
copy of LXX adds here, Ou^e iv roTrai y-m crxoniya, nor in a dark
place of tke earth, as in xlv. 19. That it stands rightly, or
at least stood very early, in this place of the version of the

.346 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLVIIL
LXX, is highly probable ; because it is acknowledged by
the Arabic version, and by the Coptic, MS St Gerraain
de Prez, Paris, translated likewise from the LXX. But
whether it should be inserted as of right belonging to the
Hebrew text, may be doubted; for a transcriber of the
Greek version might . easily add it by memory from the
parallel place ; and it is not necessary to the sense.
Ibid. — when it began to exist] An ancient MS has
Dnvn, they began to exist: and so another had it at first.
Ibid. I had decreed it] I take Dil? for a verb, not an
adverb. Ibid. And now the Lord Jehovah hath sent me, and his
Spirit] Ti; S5-'» 0 ly ra Ho-aix Xiyay ; xxy vi/v Ktig;«5 awss-SfAs fii xxi
ro Tlyivfix osuTou' ly a xfiipiZoXov oyro; tou pDTov, ¦rton^oy a Ifxrv^ xxi to
Ay(oii Hyivfix X7ri?-iiXxy rov \ti<rovy, n o Hxrvi^ x-mniM roy te Xgifov -xxi
ro 'Ayioy llyivfix' to Siuri^ov i?-iy xMh; : " W^ho is it that saith
in Isaiah, And now the Lord hath sent me and his Spirit ?
in which, as the expression is ambiguous, is it the Father
and the Holy Spirit who hath sent Jesus; or the Father
who hath sent both Christ and the Holy Spirit? The latter
is the true interpretation :" Origen, cont, Cels, lib, i, I
have kept to the order of the words of the original, on pur
pose that the arabiguity, which Origen reraarks in the ver
sion of LXX, and which is the same in the Hebrew, might
still remain, and the sense which he gives to it be offered
to the reader's judgment ; which is wholly excluded in our
vulgar translation,
18, like the river] That is, the Euphrates,
19, — like that of the bowels thereof] Din irra ixifxita
Diain Dm : " As the issue of the bowels of the sea; that is,
the fishes ;" Salom, b. Melee. And so likewise Aben Ezra,
Jarchi, Kimchi, &c.
Ibid, Thy name] For Iran;, his name, the LXX had in
the copy from which they translated Trail?, thy name,
20, — and make it heard — ] Twenty-seven MSS (ten
ancient), and one edition, prefix to the verb the conjunc
tion 1, iriraii?ni,
21, They thirsted not in the deserts-^-] Kimchi has a
surprising observation upon this place : " If the prophecy,"
says he, " relates to the return froin the Babylonish captivity,
as it seems to do, it is to be wondered how it comes to pass,
that in the book of Ezra, in which he gives an account of
their return, no mention is raade that such raii-acles were

Chap. XLVIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. .347
wrought for them; as, for instance, that God clave the
rock for them in the desert." It is really rauch to be won
dered, that one of the most learned and judicious of the
Jewish expositors of the Old Testament, having advanced
so far in a large comment on Isaiah, should appear to be
totally ignorant of the Prophet's manner of writing ; of the
paraboUc style which prevaUs in the writings of all the
Prophets ; and more particularly in the Prophecy of Isaiah,
which abounds throughout in parabolic images from the
beginning to the end ; from " Hear, O heavens, and give
ear, O earth," to " the worm and the fire" in the last verse.
And how came he to keep his wonderment to himself so
long? Why did he not expect, that the historian should
have related, how, as they passed through the desert, cedars,
pines, and olive-trees, shot up at once on the side of the
way to shade them ; and that, instead of briers and brarables,
the acacia and the rayrtle sprung up under their feet, ac
cording to God's promises, chap. xli. 19. anddv. 13, ? These,
and a multitude of the like parabolical or poetical images,
were never intended to be understood literally: all that
the Prophet designed in this place, and which he has exe
cuted in the most elegant manner, was an amplification and
illustration of the gracious care and protection of God,
vouchsafed to his people in their return from Babylon, by
an allusion to the miracufous Exodus from Egypt, See De
S, Poesi Hebr, Prael, ix,
22, The7-e is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked,]
See below, note on chap, Ivii. 21.

CHAPTER XLIX.
1. Hearken unto me, O ye distant lands — ] Hitherto
the subject of the prophecy has been chiefly confined to the
rederaption from the captivity of Babylon ; with strong in
timations of a more important deliverance sometimes thrown
in ; to the refutation of idolatry ; and the demonstration of
the infinite power, wisdom, and foreknowledge of God. The
character and office of the Messiah was exhibited in gene
ral terras at the beginning of chap. xiii. but here he is in
troduced in person, declaring the full extent of his corarais-
sion ; which is not only to restore the IsraeUtes, and recon
cUe thera to their Lord and Father, from whora they had

348 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLIX.
SO often revolted ; but to be a light to lighten the Gentiles,
to call them to the knowledge and obedience of the true
God, and to bring them to be one church together with the
Israelites, and to partake with thera of the same comraon
salvation procured for all by the great Redeemer and Re
conciler of raan to God.
2. And he hath made my mouth a sharp sword — ] The
servant of God, who speaks in the former part of this chap
ter, raust be the Messiah. If anj' part of this character
can, in any sense, belong to the Prophet, yet in some parts
it raust belong exclusively to Christ; and, in all parts, to
him in a much fuUer and more proper sense. Isaiah's
mission was to the Jews, not to the distant nations, to whom
the speaker in this place addresses hiraself. " He hath
raade my mouth a sharp sword,'' " to reprove the wicked,
and to denounce unto them punishment," says Jarchi, un
derstanding it of Isaiah : but how much better does it suit
him, who is represented as having " a sharp two-edged
sword going out of his mouth," Rev. i. 16. who is hiraself
the Word of God? which " Word is quick and powerful,
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to
the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and
marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intent^of the
heart;" Heb. iv. 12. This mighty agent and instrument
of God, " long laid up in store with hira, and sealed up
araong his treasures," is at last revealed, and produced by
his power, and under his protection, to execute his great
and holy purposes : he is compared to a polished shaft
stored in his quiver for use in his due time. The polished
shaft denotes the same efficacious word, which is before
represented by the sharp sword. The doctrine of the gos
pel pierced the hearts of its hearers, " bringing into capti
vity every thought to the obedience of Christ." The meta
phor of the sword and the arrow, applied to powerful speech,
is bold, yet just. It has been eraployed by the raost inge
nious heathen writers, if with equal elegance, not with equal
force. It is said of Pericles by Aristophanes, (see Cicero,
Epist, ad Atticum, xu, 6,) — ^
Ovra; sxvi^.ii, xxi jtoOvoj ray hvtro^ay
To xiyr^oy lyxxriXii-m roi; xxmafiiyoi;. Apud Diod, lib, XU,
His powerful speech
Pierced the hearer's soul, and left behind
Deep in his bosom its keen point infixt.

Chap. XLIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 349
Pindar is particularly fond of this metaphor, and fre
quently applies it to his ovm poetry : —
^TTi^i yvy irxoTFa To|ov,
Ays, .9-wfss. Tina /SxXXoftiy
Ex fAxXdxxx; xvn (ppl-
yo; ivxXix; oig-ov;
Ie'ts!; Olymp. ii, 160,
" Come on ! thy brightest shafts prepare.
And bend, 0 Muse, thy sounding bow ;
Say, through what paths of liquid air
Our arrows shall we throw ?" West,
See also ver, 149, of the same ode, and Olymp, ix, 17,; on
the former of which places the Scholiast says, r^oTtixo; o xoytr
/ilXvi 01 rov; Xoyo; ii^yjxi, oix ro o|y xxi xxipioy ray lyxa^iay : " He
calls his verses shafts by a metaphor, signifying the acute
ness and the apposite application of his panegyric,"
This person who is, ver, 3, called Israel, cannot in any
sense be Isaiah, That name, in its original design and full
import, can only belong to him who contended powerfully
with God in behalf of mankind, and prevailed : Gen, xxxii,
28, 5, And now thus saith Jehovah] The word na, before
irax, is dropt out of the text : it is supplied by eight MSS
(two ancient), and LXX, Syr, Vulg,
Ibid, And that Israel unto him may be gathered] Five
MSS (two ancient), confirm the Keri, or marginal correc
tion of the Masoretes, lb, unto him, instead of xb, not, in
the text; and so read Aquila and Chald, : LXX and Arab,
omit the negative. But LXX, MSS Pachora, and i, D, ii,
express also the Keri lb by irgo; «i/tov.
6, And to restore the branches of Israel] iii^a, or iiiS3,
as the Masoretes correct it in the raarginal reading. This
word has been matter of great doubt vrith interpreters : the
Syriac renders it the branch, taking it for the same with i:{3,
chap, xi, 1, : see Michaelis, Epira, in Praelect, xix,
7, T'he Redeemer of lirael, his Holy One] " Forte,
ill?npb ;" Secker : that is, to his Holy One, The preced
ing word ends with a b, which might occasion that letter's
being lost here. The Talmud of Babylon has iu?npi.
Ibid, To him, whose person is despised] " Forte, nraa ;"
Secker: or iira, Le Clerc: that is, instead of the active,
the passive form, which seems here to be required.
9. And to those that are in darkness — ] Fifteen MSS

350 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLIX.
(five ancient), and the two old editions of 1486 and 1488,
add the conjunction i at the beginning of this member.:
another MS had it so at first; and two others have a rasure
at the place : and it is expressed by LXX, Syr, Chald,
Vulg, 12, Lo ! these shall comefrorn, afar] " Babylon was far,
and east, nirrara ; (non sic Vett.) ; Sinira, Pelusians, to the
south:" Secker,
Ibid, — the land qfSinim] Prof, Doederlein thought of
Syene, the southern limit of Egjrpt ; but does not abide by
it, Michaelis thinks it is right; and proniises to give his
reasons for so thinking in the second part of his SpecUegium
Geographiag Hebraeorum Exterae, See Biblioth, Oriental,
Part XI, p, 176,
13, Ye mountains burst forth] Three ancient MSS are
without either the i, or the conjunction i, before the verb:
and so LXX, Syr, Vulg,
16, Behold, on the palms of my hands have I delineated
thee] This is certainly an allusion to some practice, cora
mon among the Jews at that tirae, of making marks on their
hands or arms by punctures on the skin, with some sort of
sign or representation of the city or temple, to shew their
affection and zeal for it. They had a method of making
such punctures indelible by fire, or by staining. See note
on chap. xliv. 5. It is well known, that the pilgrims at the
holy sepulchre get themselves marked in this raanner with
what are called the ensigns of Jerusalem ; MaundreU, p. 75. ;
where he tells us how it is performed : and this art is prac
tised by travelling Jews all over the world at this day.
17. They that destroyed thee shall soon become thy build
ers — ] " Auctor Vulgatae pro ?iiaa videtur legisse TIi3l3,
unde vertit, structores tui ; cui et LXX fere consentiunt,
qui verterunt ano^ofiyidm, cedificata es, prout in Plantiniana
editione habetur ; in Vaticana sive Romana legitur, oixo^oftn-
iwri, (xdificaberis. Hisce etiam Targum Jonathanis aliqua-
tenus consentit, ubi, et adificabuht. Confer infra Esai. cap.
liv. ver. 13. ad quem locum Rabbini quoque notarunt ex
tractatu Talmudico Berachot. cap. ix. quod non legendura
sit 'nj3a, id est,filii tui ; sed !]i3a, cedificatores tui. Confer
not. ad librura Prec. Jud. Part. II. p. 226. ut et D, Wagen-
seil Sot, p, 253. n, 9, :" Breithaupt, not, ad Jarchi in loc.
See also note on this place in De Sac. Poes, Hebr, Praelect,
xxxi.

Chap. XLIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 331
Ibid, — shall become thine offspring] ixsi "irara, shall
proceed, spring, issue, from thee, — as thy children. The
phrase is frequently used in this sense: see chap, xi, 1,
Micah V, 2, Nahum i, 11, The accession of the Gentiles
to the church of God is considered as an addition raade to
the nuraber of the family and children of Sion : see ver, 21,
22, and chap, lx, 4, The coramon rendering, " shall go
forth of thee, or depart from thee," is very flat, after their
zeal had been expressed by " shall become thy builders;"
and as the opposition is kept up in one part of the sentence,
one has reason to expect it in the other, which should have
been paraUel to it,
18, And bind them about thee, as a bride — ] The end
of the sentence is manifesdy imperfect. Does a bride bind
her children, or her new subjects, about her ? Sion clothes
herself with her children, as a bride clothes herself— -with
what ? some other thing certainly. The LXX help us out
in this difficulty, and supply the lost word : a; xoo-fioy yvfi(pii\-
nba nibaa, or niba nbaa. The great similitude of the
two words has occasioned the omission of one of them. See
chap, lxi, 10,
21, — these then, where were they?] The conjunction is
added before nbX; that is, nbxi, in above thirty MSS (nine
ancient) ; and so LXX, Chald, Vulg,
23, With their faces to the earth — ] It is well known,
that expressions of submission, homage, and reverence, al
ways have been, ' and are still, carried to a great degree of
extravagance in the eastern countries. When Joseph's
brethren were introduced to hira, " they bowed down thera
selves before him with their faces to the earth ;" Gen, xiii, 6,
The kings of Persia never adraitted any one to their pre
sence without exacting this act of adoration ; for that was
the proper term for it. " Necesse est," says the Persian
courtier tq Conon, " si in conspectura veneris, venerari te
regera ; quod -rr^oaxvyuy illi vocant :" Nepos in Conone, Alex
ander, intoxicated with success, affected this piece of oriental
pride: " Itaque more Persarura Macedonas venerabundos
ipsum salutare, prosternentes humi corpora :" Curtius, lib,
viii. The insolence of eastern monarchs to conquered prin
ces, and the submission of the latter, is astonishing, Mr
Harmer, Obs, ii, 43, gives the following instance of it from
D'Herbelot:  " This prince threw hiraself one day on the
ground, and kissed the prints that his victorious eneray's

352 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. XLIX.
horse had made there; reciting some verses in Persian,
which he had composed, to this effect : —
" The mark that the foot of your horse has left upon the
dust, serves me now for a crown.
The ring, which I wear as the badge of my slavery, is
becorae ray richest ornaraent.
While I shall have the happiness to kiss the dust of your
feet, I shall think that fortune favours me with its tenderest
caresses, and its sweetest kisses,"
These expressions, therefore, of the Prophet, are only
general poetical images, taken from the manners of the
country, to denote great respect and reverence : and such
splendid poetical images, which frequently occur in the pro
phetical writings, were intended only as general amplifica
tions of the subject, not as predictions to be understood and
fulfilled precisely according to the letter,
24, Shall the prey seized by the terrible be rescued ?] For
plis read yiir- A palpable mistake, like that in chap,
xiii, 19, The correction is self-evident from the very terms
of the sentence ; from the necessity of the strict correspond
ence in the expressions between the question and the answer
made to it ; and it is apparent to the blindest and most pre
judiced eye. However, if authority is also necessary, there
is that of Syr, and Vulg, for it; who plainly read yiir in
the 24th as well as in the 25th verse, rendering it in the
forraer place by the same word as in the latter.

CHAPTER L,
1, Where is this bill — ] Husbands, through moroseness
or levity of temper, often sent bUls of divorcement to their
wives on slight occasions, as they were perraitted to do by
the law of Moses, Deut, xxiv, 1 , And fathers, . being op
pressed with debt, often sold their children; which they
might do, for a time, till the year of release : Exod. xxi. 7.
That this was frequently practised, appears frora raany
passages of Scripture ; and that the persons and the liberty
of the children were answerable for the debts of the father.
The widow, 2 Kings iv. 1. complains, " that the creditor is
come to take unto him her two sons to be bondmen." And
in the parable, Matt, xviii. 25. " The lord, forasmuch as
his servant had not to pay, comraands hira to be sold, and

Chap. L. NOTES ON ISAIAH.
his wife and chUdren, and all that he had, and payme&M
be made." Sir John Chardin's MS note on this pl'ace^
Isaiah is as follows : " En Orient, on paye ses dettes avec
ses esclaves, car Us sont des principaux meubles ; et en plu-
sieurs lieux on les paye aussi de ses enfans." But this, saith
God, cannot be my case : I am not governed by any such
motives ; neither am I urged by any such necessity : your
captivity, therefore, and your afflictions, are to be imputed
to yourselves, and to your own folly and wickedness.
2. Theirfishisdriedup] For n?xan, sifzwto^, read ii?ain,
is dried up .- so it stands in the Bodleian MS, and it is con
firmed by the LXX, ^vi^xyiwovrxi.
5. Neither did I withdraw—] Eleven MSS, and the
oldest edition, prefix the conjunction i ; and so also LXX
and Syr.
6. And my cheeks to them that plucked off the hai?-] The
greatest indignity that could possibly be offered. See note
on chap. vii. 20.
Ibid. My face I hid not from shame and spitting] Ano
ther instance of the utraost contempt and detestation. It
was ordered by the law of Moses, as a severe punishment,
carrying with it a lasting disgrace : Deut. xxv. 9. Among
the Medes, it was highly offensive to spit in any one's pre
sence, Herod, i. 99. ; and so likewise among the Persians,
Xenophon. Cyrop. lib. i. p. 18.
" They abhor me ; they flee far from me ;
They forbear not to spit in my face." Job xxx. 10.
And Jehovah said unto Moses : " If her father had but spit
in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days ?" Numb.
xii. 14.; on which place Sir John Chardin remarks, " that
spitting before any one, or spitting upon the ground in
speaking of any one's actions, is through the East an expres
sion of extreme detestation:" Harraer's Observ. ii. 509.
See also, of the sarae notion^ of the Arabs in this respect,
Niebuhr, Description de I'Arabie, p. 26. It so evidently
appears, that in those countries spitting has ever been an
expression of the utmost detestation, that the learned doubt
whether in the passages of Scripture above quoted, any thing
more is meant than spitting (not in the face, which perhaps
the words do not necessarily imply, but only) in the pre
sence of the person affronted. But in this place it certainly
means spitting in the face : so it is understood in St Luke,
where our Lord plainly refers to this prophecy: — " All

354 NOTES ON ISAIAH. ChAP. L.
things that are written by the Prophets concerning the Son
of Man shall be accomplished ; for he shall be delivered to
the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated,
and .spitted on, ifiTrlvo-ho-ilxi," xviii, 31, 32, ; which was in fact
fulfiUed ; xxi nf%xyro rm; iff?r1viiy xvia, Mark xiv, 65, XV, 19,
If spitting in a person's presence was such an indignity, how-
much more spitting in his face ?
7, Therefore have I set my face as a flint — ] The Pro
phet Ezekiel has expressed this with great force, in his bold
and vehement manner :
" Behold, I have made thy face strong against their faces,
And thy forehead strong against their foreheads :
As an adamant, harder than a rock, have I made thy fore
head, . . ¦ '
Fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks.
Though they be a rebellious house," Ezek, iii, 8, 9,
8, Who is he that will contend — ] The Bodleian MS,
and another, add the word xin ; aiii xin in, as in the like
phrase in the next verse : and in the very same phrase. Job
xiii. 19., and so likewise in many other places, Job xvii. 3.
xli. 1. Sometiraes, on the like occasions, it is nr in, and
nr xin in. The word has been probably lost out of the
present text; and the reading of the MS above-mentioned
seems to be genuine.
10. Let him hearken to the voice of his servant 7] For
rrni?, pointed as the participle, the^iXX and Syr. read ¦
rnu?i, future or imperative : this givfes a much more elegant
turn and distribution to the sentence.
11. — ye who kindle afire — ] The fire of their own
kindling, by the light of which they walk with security and
satisfaction, is an image designed to express, in genera],
human devices, and mere worldly policy, exclusive of faith
and trust in God ; which, though they flatter them for a
while with pleasing expectations and some appearance of
success, shall in the end turn to the confusion of the authors.
Or, more particularly, as Vitringa explains it, it may mean
the designs of the turbulent and factious Jews in the times
succeeding those of Christ ; who, in pursuit of their own
desperate scheraes, stirred up the war against the Roraans,
and kindled a fire which consuraed their city and nation.
Ibid. — who heap the fuel round about] " ibnan, accen-
dentes, Syr. forte legerunt [pro iirxn] iiixn ; nam sequitur
IIX :" Secker. Lud. CapeUus^ in his critical notes on this
place, thinks it should be iirrn, from the LXX, xxri<r-)(,voni;.

Chap. LL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 355

CHAPTER LI.
4. — O ye peoples ; — 0 ye nations] For ''¦a^, my people,
the Bodley MS, and another, read Dinr, ye peoples; and
for inixb, my nation, the Bodley MS, and eight others
(two of them ancient), read Dinxb, ye nations: and so the
Syriac in both words. The difference is very material : for
in this case the address is made, not to the Jews, but to the
Gentiles, as in all reason it ought to be : for this and the
two following verses express the call of the Gentiles, the
islands, or the distant lands on the coasts of the Mediterra
nean and other seas. It is also to be observed, -that God in
no other place calls his people inxb. It has been before
remarked, that transcribers frequently oraitted the final D of
nouns plural, and supplied it, for brevity-sake, and sorae- '
times for want of room at the end of a line, by a small
stroke thus, 'inr ; which mark, being effaced or overlooked,
has been the occasion of many mistakes of this kind.
5. My righteousness is at hand — ] The word pis, righte
ousness, is used in such a great latitude of signification, for
justice, truth, faithfulness, goodness, mercy, deliverance, sal
vation, &c., that it is not easy sometiraes to give the precise
meaning of it without much circumlocution : it means here
the faithful completion of God's promises to deliver his
people. 11. — shall they obtain, and. sorrow and sighing shall flee
away] Nineteen MSS, and the two oldest editions, have
iail2?i ; and forty-six MSS, and the same two editions, and
agreeably to them Chald. and Syr. have loai : and so both
words are expressed, chap. xxxv. 10. of which place this is
a repetition. And from coraparing both together it appears,
that the i in this place is become by mistake in the present
text the final \ of the preceding word.
13. — of the oppressor, as if he — ] " The a in iu>xa
seems clearly to have changed its situation, from the end of
the preceding word to the beginning of this ; or rather, to
have been oraitted by raistake there, because it was here.
That it was there, the LXX shew by rendermg Ipisnn,
^xiZoyro; n, of him that oppressed thee. And so they render
this word in both its places in this verse. 'The Vulgate also
has the pronoun in the first instance : furor is ejus qui te tri-
bulabat:" Dr Jubb. The correction seems well founded.

.336 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LL
I have not conforraed the translation to it, because it makes
very little difference in the sense.
14. He marcheth on with speed — ] Cyrus, if understood
of the teraporal redemption frora the captivity of Babylon ;
in the spiritual sense, the Messiah.
16. To stretch out the heavens] In the present text it is
r I33b, to plant the heavens. The phrase is certainly very ob
scure, and in all probability is a mistake for nia3b. This
latter is the word used in ver. 13. just before, in the very
same sentence ; and this phrase occurs frequently in Isaiah,
chap. xl. 22. xiii. 5. xliv. 24. xlv. 12. ; the former in no
other place. It is also very remarkable, that in the Sama
ritan text, Nurab. xxiv. 6. these two words are twice chang
ed, by raistake, one for the other, in the sarae verse.
19. These two things — desolation and destruction, the
famine and the sword] That is, desolation by famine, and
destruction by the sword ; taking the terms alternately : of
which form of construction see other exaraples, De S. Poesi
Heb. Prael. xix. and Prelim. Dissert, p. xix. The Chaldee
paraphrast, not rightly understanding this, has had recouri;e
to the foUowing expedient : " Two afflictions are come upon
thee, — and vihen four shall corae upon thee, depredation and
destruction, and thefamine and the sroord — " Five MSS
have arm, without the conjupction i ; and so LXX and Syr.
Ibid. —Who shaU comfort thee?] A MS, LXX, Syr.
Chald. and Vulg. have it in the third person, ^nn3i ; which
is evidently right.
20. — in the toils, drenched to the full — ] " Forte ninan
Dixbn :" Secker. The demonstrative n, prefixed to Dixbn,
seems improper in this place.
21. And thou drunken, but not with wine.] ^schylus
has the same expression :
Aoiyoi; ififixyii; Svfiafexiri. Eumen. 863.
Intoxicate with passion, not with wine.
Schultens thinks, that this circumlocution, as he calls it,
" gradum adfert incoraparabiliter majorem ;" and that it
raeans not siraply without wine, but 7nuch more than with
wine : Grara. Hebr. p. 182. See his note on Job xxx. 28.
The bold Jraage of the cup of God's wrath, often em
ployed by the sacred writers, (see note on chap. i. 22.), is no
where handled with greater force and sublimity than in this
passage of Isaiah, ver. 17 — 23. Jerusalem is represented in

Chap. LL NOTES ON ISAIAH; - .337
person as staggering under the effects of it, destitute of that
assistance which she might expect from her children ; not
one of them being able to support or to lead her. They,
abject and amazed, Ue at the head of every street, over
whelmed v^ith the greatness of their distress : like the oryx
entangled in a net, in vain struggling to rend it, and extri
cate himselfi This is poetry of the first order, subUraity of
the highest proof.
Plato had an idea something like this : " Suppose, says
he, God had given to men a medicating- potion inducing
fear ; so that the more any one should drink of it, so much
the raore miserable he should find himself at every draught,
and become fearful of every thing both present and future ;
and at last, though the most courageous of raen, should be
totally possessed by fear; and afterward, having slept off
the effects of it, should become himself again :" De Leg. i.
near the end. He pursues at large this hypothesis, apply
ing it to his own purpose, which has no relation to the
present subject. Homer places two vessels at the threshold
of Jupiter, one of good, the other of evil : he gives to some
a potion mixed of both, to others from the evil vessel only :
these are completely miserable : Iliad, xxvi. 527.
23. — who oppress thee] " Videntur, LXX, Chald. Syr,
Vulg, legisse Tisin, ut xl, 26, :" Secker, And so it is in
edit, Gersom,
Ibid, That say to thee. Bow down thy body] A very
strong and most expressive description of the insolent pride
of eastern conquerors ; which, though it may seem greatly
exaggerated, yet hardly exceeds the strict truth. An ex
ample has already been given of it in note to chap, xlix, 23,
I will here add one or two more, " Joshua called for all
the men of Israel ; and said unto the captains of the men of
war that went with him : Come near, put your feet upon
the necks of these kings ;" Josh, x, 24. " Adonibezek said,
Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their
great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table : as I
have done, so hath God requited me ;" Judg, i, 7, The
Emperor Valerianus being through treachery taken prisoner
by Sapor king of Persia, was treated by him as the basest
and raost abject slave : for the Persian monarch commanded
the unhappy Roman to bow hiraself down, and offer him
his back, on which he set his foot, in order to mount his
chariot or his horse, whenever he had occasion : Lactan-
D d

358 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LI.
tins, De Mort, Persec, cap, v, ; Aurel, Victor. Epitome, cap,
xxxu,
CHAPTER LIL
2, — ascend thy lofty seat] The literal rendering here
is, according to our English translation, " arise, sit :" on
which a very learned person remarks ; '" So the old versions.
But sitting is an expression of mourning in Scripture and
the ancients ; and doth not well agree with the rising just
before." It doth not indeed agree according to our ideas;
but considered in an oriental light, it is perfectly consistent.
The common manner of sitting in the eastern countries is
upon the ground or floor, with the legs crossed. The
people of better condition have the floors of their chambers
or divans covered with carpets for this purpose ; and round
the chamber broad couches, raised a little above the floor,
spread with mattresses handsomely covered, which are called
sophas. When sitting is spoken of as a posture of more
than ordinary state, it is quite of a different kind ; and means
sitting on high, on a chair of state or throne ; for which a
footstool was necessary, both in order that the person might
raise himself up to it, and for supporting the legs when he
was placed in it. " Chairs (saith Sir John Chardin) are
never used in Persia but at the coronation of their kings.
The king is seated in a chair of gold set with jewels, three
feet high. — The chairs which are used by the people in the
East are always so high as to make a footstool necessary.
And this proves the propriety of the style of Scripture, which
always joins the footstool to the throne :" (Isa. Ixvi. 1. Psal,
ex, 1,) : Voyages, tom. ix, p. 85, 12™°, Beside the six steps
to Solomon's throne, theire was a footstool of gold fastened
to the seat, 2 Chron, ix. 18. which would otherwise have
been too high for the king to reach, or to sit on conveniently.
When 'Thetis comes to wait on Vulcan to request armour
for her son, she is received with great respect, and seated
on a silver-studded throne, a chair of ceremony, with a foot
stool : — ¦
Tut |Msii i-mirx xxhio-iy itti B-^oyov x^yv^oviXn,
IC«As, ^xi^xXiy v-TS-o h B-^nyv; -rroo-iy niv. Iliad, xviii. 389.
" High on a throne, with stars of silver graced,
And various artifice, the queen she placed;
A footstool at her feet." Pope,

Chap. LII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 359
O yceg 3-go»«5 auTos fuvor iXivh^to; irt xxk^^x o-vy viro-TToiiu : AtheilEeUS,
V, 4, : "A throne is nothing more than a handsome sort of
chair, with a footstool,"
5, And they that are lords over them — ] For ibli?n, sin
gular, in the text, raore than a hundred and twenty MSS
have iibii?n, plural, according to the Masoretical correction
in the raargin : which shews, that the Masoretes often super-
stitiously retained apparent mistakes in the text, even when
they had sufficient evidence to authorize the introduction of
the true reading.
Ibid, — make their boast of it] For ibibni, "make thera
to howl," five MSS (two ancient) have ibbni, "make their
boast ;" which is confirmed by the Chaldee paraphrast, who
renders it pnanwn,
6, Therefore shall my people — ] The word pb, occur
ring the .second time in diis verse, seems to be repeated by
mistake. It has no force or emphasis as a repetition; it
only embarrasses the construction and the sense. It was
not in the copies from which the LXX, Syr, and Vulg,
were translated; it was not in the copy of LXX from
which the Arabic was translated : but in the Aldine and
Complutensian editions S(« ryro is repeated; probably so
corrected, in order to make it conforraable vrith the Hebrew
text. Ibid, For I am He that promised] For xin, the Bodley
MS, and another, have nmi; "for I am Jehovah that
promised:" and another ancient MS adds nini after xm.
The addition of Jehovah seeras to be right, in consequence
of what was said in the preceding line, " My people shall
know my name."
7, How beautiful — ] The watchmen discover afar off,
on the mountains, the messenger bringing the expected and
much wished-for news of the deliverance from the Babylonish
captivity. They immediately spread the joyful tidings, ver,
8, and with a loud voice proclaiin that Jehovah is re
turning to Sion, to resume his residence on his holy moun
tain, which for some time he seeraed to have deserted. This
is the Uteral sense of the place,
" How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the
joyful messenger," is an expression highly poetical ; for, how
welcome is his arrival ! how agreeable are the tidings which
he brings !
Nahum, who is generally supposed to have lived after

360 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LIL
Isaiah, has manifestly taken from him this very pleasing
image ; but the imitation does not equal the beauty of the
original : —
" Behold upon the mountains the feet of the joyful messenger,
Of him that announceth peace :
Celebrate, O Judah, thy festivals ; perform thy vows :
For no more shall pass through thee the wicked one ;
He is utterly cut off." Nah, i, 15,
But it must at the same time be observed, that Isaiah's sub
ject is infinitely more interesting, and more subUme, than
that of Nahum : The latter denounces the destruction of the
capital of the Assyrian empire, the most formidable eneray
of Judah ; the ideas of the former are in their full extent
evangelical : and accordingly St Paul has, with the utmost
propriety, applied this passage to the preaching of the gos
pel, Rora, X, 15, The joyful tidings here to be proclairaed,
" Thy God, O.Sion, reigneth," are the sarae that John the
Baptist, the messenger of Christ, and that Christ himself
published, " The kingdom of heaven is at hand,"
8, AU thy watchmen — ] There is a difficulty in the
construction of this place, which, I think, none of the ancient
versions, or modern interpreters, have cleared up to satisfac
tion. Rendered word for word it stands thus : " The voice
of thy watchmen : they lift up their voice," The sense of
the first member, considered as eUiptical, is variously sup
plied by various expositors ; by none, as it seems to me, in
any way that is easy and natural, I am persuaded there is
a mistake in the present text, and that the true reading is
liss ba, " aU thy watchmen;" instead of lis a bip. The
mistake was easy from the similitude in sound of the two let
ters a and p. And in one MS the p is upon a rasure- "This
correction perfectly rectifies the sense and the construction.
Ibid, — when Jehovah returneth to Sion,] So the Chal
dee: pisb nin3aii? aini ia, " when he shaU bring back his
presence to Sion," God is considered as having deserted
his people during the captivity ; artd, at the restoration, as
returning hiraself with them to Sion his former habitation :
See Psal, lx, 1, chap, xl, 9, and note.
9. — he hath redeemed Israel] For the word Dbll?lii,
which occurs the second time in this verse, MS Bodley, and
another, read bxiii?i. It is upon a rasure in a third; and
left unpointed at first, as suspected, in a fourth. It was an
easy mistake, by the transcriber's casting his eye on the line

Chap. LIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 361
above; and the propriety of the correction, both in regard
to sense and elegance, is evident,
11, Depart, depart ye; go ye out from thence] The
Prophet Jeremiah seems to have had his eye on this passage
of Isaiah, and to have applied it to a subject directly oppo
site. It is here addressed by the Prophet in the way of en
couragement and exhortation to the Jews coming out of
Babylon : Jeremiah has given it a different turn, and has
thrown it out as a reproach of the heathen upon the Jews,
when they were driven from Jerusalem into captivity :
" Depart ; ye are polluted, depart ; depart ye, forbear to touch :
Yea, they are fled, they are removed : they shall dwell here
no raore." Lam. iv. 15.
Of the metrical distribution of these lines, see the Prelim.
Dissertation, p. xxxvi. note.
13. The subject of Isaiah's prophecy, from the fortieth
chapter inclusive, has hitherto been, in general, the deliver
ance of the people of God. This includes in it three distinct
parts; which, however, have a close connexion with one
another : that is, the deliverance of the Jews from the cap
tivity of Babylon ; the deliverance of the Gentiles from their
miserable state of ignorance and idolatry ; and the deliver
ance of mankind from the captivity of sin and death.
These three subjects are subordinate to one another; and
the two latter are shadowed out under the image of the
former. They are covered by it as by a veil ; which how
ever is transparent, and suffers them to appear through it.
Cyrus is expressly named as the iraraediate agent of God in
effecting the first deliverance : A greater Person is spoken
of as the agent who is to effect the two latter deliverances ;
called die servant, the elect, of God, in whora his soul de
lighteth ; Israel, in whom God wdl be glorified. Now these
three subjects have a very near relation to one another; for,
as the agent who was to effect the two latter deliverances,
that is, the Messiah, was to be born a Jew, with particular
limitations of time, familyj and other circurastances ; the
first deUverance was necessary in the order of Providence,
and according to the determinate counsel of God, to the
accomplishment of the two latter deliverances ; and the se
cond deliverance was necessary to the third, or rather, was
involved in it, and made an essential part of it. This being
the case, Isaiah has not treated the three subjects as quite
distinct and separate in a methodical and orderly manner,

362 NOTES ON ISAIAH, Chap. LII.
like a philosopher or a logician, but has taken them in their
connective view : he has handled them as a prophet and a
poet ; he hath aUegorized the former, and under the image
of it has shadowed out the two latter ; he has thrown them
all together ; has mixed one with another, has passed from
this to that with rapid transitions, and has painted the whole
with the strongest and boldest imagery, 'The restoration of
the Jews from captivity, the call of the GentUes, the redemp
tion by Messiah, have hitherto been handled interchangeably
and alternately: Babylon has hitherto been kept pretty
much in sight ; at the same time that strong intimations of
soraething much greater have frequently been thrown in.
But here Babylon is at once dropped ; and I think hardly
ever comes in sight again; unless perhaps in chap, Iv, 12,
and Ivii, 14, The Prophet's views are almost wholly en
grossed by the superior part of his subject. He introduces
the Messiah as appearing at first in the lowest state of hurai-
liation, which he had just touched upon before, chap, 1, 5, 6,
and obviates the offence which would be occasioned by it,
by declaring the important and necessary cause of it, and
foreshewing the glory which shoidd follow it.
This seems to me to be the nature and the true design of
this part of Isaiah's prophecies ; and this view of them seems
to afford the best method of resolving difficulties in which
expositors are frequently engaged, being much divided be
tween what is caUed the literal and the mystical sense — not
very properly; for the mystical or spiritual sense is very
often the most literal sense of aU.
Abarbanel seems to have had an idea of this kind, as he is
quoted by Vitringa on chap, xlix, 1. who thus represents his
sentiments : " Censet Abarbanel Prophetara hic transitum
facere a liberatione ex exilio Babylonico ad Uberationem ex
exilio Romano, (for this he takes to be the secondary sense) ;
et, quod hic animadversu dignum est, observat Uberationem
ex exilio Babylonico esse nixii nix, signura et arguraen-
tiiin liberationis futurse ; atque adeo orationera Prophetae de
duabus hisce liberationibus in superioribus concionibus saepe
inter se perraisceri. Verba ejus : ' Et propterea verba, sive
res, in prophetia superiore inter se permixtae occurrunt;
modo de liberatione Babylonica, modo de liberatione extrema
accipiendse, ut orationis necessitas exigit.' Nullum hic vi-
tiura, nisi quod rederaptionem veram et spiritualem a Messia
vero Jesu adductam non agnoscat."

Chap. LIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 363
14. — were astonished at him] For ^1br read vbr : so
Syr. Chald. and Vulg. in a MS ; and so likewise two ancient
MSS.
15. So shall he sprinkle many nations] I retain the cora
mon rendering, though- I am by no means satisfied with it
" nr% frequent in the law, means only to sprinkle : but the
water sprinkled is the accusative case ; the thing, on which,
has br or bx. Qxvftxs-oyrxi, 0, makes the best apodosis.
an3i would do. im3i is used ii. 2. Jer. xxxi, 12, Ii, 44, but
is unlike. Kings shall shut, &c, is good ; but seems to want
a first part :" Secker, Munster translates it, " Faciet loqui
(de se) ;" and in his note thus explains it : " nri proprie sig
nificat spargere et stillas disseminare : hic vero capitur pro
loqui, et verbum disseminare," This is pretty rauch as
the Rabbins, Kirachi, and Salorao ben Melee, explain it,
referring to the expression of " dropping the word," But
the same objection Ues to this as to the coraraon rendering;
it ought to be Diia br (iai) nri. Bishop Chandler, De
fence, p, 148, says, " that to sprinkle, is used for to surprise
and astonish, as people are that have much water thrown
upon them. And this sense is followed by the LXX,"
This is ingenious, but rather too refined, Dr Durell
conjectures, that the true reading may be irni, they shall
regard, which comes near to the B-xvftxtrcyrxi of the LXX ;
who seem to give the best sense of any to the place,
" I find in my papers the same conjecture which Dr
Durell made from 9-xvfixo-oyJxi in LXX, And it may be
added, that nrn is used to express " looking on any thing
with admiration ;" Psal, xi, 7. and xvii, 15, and xxvii, 4, and
Ixiii, 2, Cant, vi, 13, It is particularly appUed to " looking
on God," Exod, xxiv, II, and Job xix, 26, Gisbert Cuper,
in Observat, Ub. u. 1. though aliud agens, has sortie obser
vations which shew how nearly ot,xa and 9-xvfix^a are allied,
wliich (with the peculiar sense of the verb nrn above noted)
add to the probabiUty of 9-xvfox^oflxi being the version of irm
in the text : «( ?s m a«o( nxtle; i; xvloy o^aTi. Hesiod. id est,
cum veneratione quadam admirantur. Hinc i^xa et S-xvfix^o>
junxit TheraistiuS Or. 1. E(1» !r«ui!-ov7«( « xy^a-^roi ti-^o; irs fioyoy
Jjflvlss, XXl o-i foo»o« dxv!ix{oy%. Theophrastus in Charact. cap,
in, EvfcftM a; xTToixi-rrys-iy ii; o-i ii xy^ea-rioi. Hence the rendering
of this verse seems to be : —
So many nations shall look on him with admiration ;
Kings shall stop their mouths—" Dr Jubb.

364 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LIII.
CHAPTER LIIL
2, He hath no form, nor any beauty. — ] Ovx ulo; xvra, yii
a,%ia^x, Iyx iioafiiy xvroy yoi S^a^ix, hx iTriSvfiUftiy avroy : Symma
chus; the only one of the ancients that has translated it
rightly, 3, — and acquainted with grief—-] For r.nii, eight MSS
and one edition have riii ; LXX, Syr, and Vulg, read it
rivi. Ibid. — ras one that hideth his face] For inDnai, four
MSS (two ancient) have iinonai, one MS iinDni. For
DISS, two MSS have vsa ; and so Ukewise LXX and Vulg,
Mourners covered up the lower part of their faces, and their
heads; 2 Sara. xv. 30. Ezek. xxiv. 17.; and lepers were
coramanded by the law, Lev. xiii. 45. to cover their upper
lip. From which circumstance it seems, that Vulg. Aquila,
Symmachus, and the Jevrish comraentators, have taken the
word ria3, stricken, in the next verse, as raeaning stricken
with the leprosy, iv »<pti »»]«, Sym. ; «(pnf4svov, Aq. ; leprosura,
Vulg. 4. Surely our irifirmities — ] Seven MSS (two ancient),
and three editions, have I3iibti, in the plural number. ^
Ibid. — he hath carried them] Fifteen MSS (two an^
cient), and two editions, have the word xin before Dbao in
the text : four other MSS have it in the margin. This adds
force to the sense, and elegance to the construction.
5. — by which our peace is effected] Twenty-one MSS
and six editions have the word fully and regularly expressed,
I3inbli?; " pacifipationum nostrarum :" Ar. Montan.
6. — the iniquities of us all] For |ir, the anciept interr
preters read ni3ir, plural; and so Vulg. in MS Blanchini,
8, And his manner of life who would declare?] My
learned friend Dr Kennicott has comraunicated to rae the
following passages frora the Mishna, and the Geraara of
Babylon, as leading to a satisfactory explication of this diffir-
cult place. It is said in the forraer, that, before any one
was punished for a capital crirae, proclaraation was raade
before the prisoner by the public crier in these words :
vbr inbii xai niar ib rivu? in ba, " quicunque noverit
aliquid de ejus innocentia, veniat et doceat de eo :" Tract,
Sanhedrira, Surenhus, Par, IV, p, 233, On which passage
the Geinara of Babylon adds, that, " before the death of

Chap. LIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 365
Jesus, this proclaraation was raade for forty days; but no
defence could be found," On which words Lardner ob
serves, " It is truly surprising to see such falsities, contrary
to well known facts:" Testimonies, vol, i, p, 198, The
report is certainly false ; but this false report is founded on
the supposition that there was such a custom, and so far
confirms the account above given from the Mishna, The
Mishna was composed in the middle of the second century,
according to Prideaux ; Lardner ascribes it to the year of
Christ 180,
Casaubon has a quotation from Maimonides, which fur
ther confirms this account : Exercitat, in Baronu Annales,
Art, Ixxxvi. Ann, 34, Num, 119, " Auctor est Mairaonides
in Perek xiii, ejus Libri ex opere Jad, solitura fieri, ut cura
Reus, sententiam mortis passus, a loco judicii exibat ducen-
dus ad supplicium, praecederet ipsum man, xvi^vl, praeco;
et hffic verba diceret : Ille exit occidendus morte ilia, quia
transgressus est transgressione ilia, in loco illo, tempore illo,
et sunt ejus rei testes ille et ille. Qui noverit aliquid ad
ejus innocentiam probandara, veniat, et loquatur pro eo,"
Now it is plain from the history of the four Evangelists,
that in the trial and condemnation of Jesus no such rule was
observed, (though, according to the account of the Mishna,
it must have been in practice at that time) ; no proclamation
was made for any person to bear witness to the innocence
and character of Jesus; nor did any one voluntarily step
forth to give his attestation to it. And our Saviour seems
to refer to such a custom, and to claim the benefit of it, by
his answer to the High Priest, when he asked him of his dis
ciples and of his doctrine : " I spake openly to the world ;
I ever tpnght in the synagogue and in the temple, whither
the Jews: always resort; and in secret have I said nothing.
Why askest thou me ? ask them which heard me, what I
have said unto them: behold, they know what I said;"
John xviii. 20, 21, This therefore was one reraarkable in
stance of hardship and injustice, among others, predicted by
the Prophet, which our Saviour underwent in his trial and
sufferings, St Paul likewise, in similar circumstances, standing before
the judgment-seat of Festus, seems to complain of the same
unjust treatment; that no one was called, or -would appear
to vindicate his character : " My raanner of life (rm ^<-«^iy
liov, 1111), from ray youth, which was at the first among my

366 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LIII.
own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews ; which knew
me from the beginning, if they would testify ; that after the
straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee ;" Acts xxvi.
in signifies age, duration, the time which one man or
many together pass in this world ; in this place, the cour.se,
tenor, or manner of life. The verb in signifies, according
to CasteU. " ordinatam vitara sive aetatem egit, ordinavit,
ordine constituit." In Arabic, " curavit, administravit."
Ibid. — he was smitten to death] The LXX read ninb,
ii; 9-«»«1ov. And so the Coptic and Sahidic versions frora
LXX, MSS St Germain de Prez.
" Origen, (contra Celsum, lib. i. p. 370. edit. 1733), after
having quoted at large this prophecy concerning the Mes
siah, tells us, that having once made use of this passage in a
dispute against some that were accounted wise among the
Jews ; one of them replied, that the words did not mean one
man, but one people, the Jews ; who were smitten of God,
and dispersed araong the Gentiles for their conversion : that
he then urged raany parts of this prophecy, to shew the ab
surdity of this interpretation ; and that he seeraed to press
them the hardest by this sentence ; xtco ray xyoftiay ts xxy fcy
ttX,h s'5 ^xyxloy. Now as Origen, the author of the Hexapla,
must have understood Hebrew, we cannot suppose that he
would have urged this last quotation as so decisive, if the
Gbreek version had not agreed here with the Hebrew text;
nor that these wise Jews would have been at all distressed by
this quotation, unless their Hebrew text had read agreeably
to m B-xyxroy, on which the argument principaUy depended :
for, by quoting it immediately, they would have triumphed
over him, and reprobated his Greek version. This, when
ever they could do it, was their constant pitoctice, in their
disputes with the Christians. Jerora, in his preface to the
Psalms, says, " Nuper cum Hebraeo disputartS, quaedam pro
Doraino salvatore de Psalrais testimonia protulisti : volenSque
ille te illudere, per sermones fere singulos asserebat, non ita
haberi in Hebraeo, ut tu de LXX opponebas." And Ori
gen himself, who laboriously compared the Hebrew text
with the LXX, has recorded the necessity of arguing with
the Jews from such passages only as were in the LXX
agreeable to the Hebrew : iyx ir^o; ly^xioi; hxxiyofnyoi ftti tt^o-
cpi^aifAiy xvroi; rx fAyi xu^iyx iv roi; xvriy^x^oi; xvray, xxi Iyx ^vy%pvitrU'
fttix roi; <p!|0|Ke»oi; -ptx^' ixiiyoi;. See Epist. ad African, p. 15.. 17.

Chap. LIII. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 367
Wherefore, as Origen had carefidly compared the Greek
version of LXX with the Hebrew text, and speaks of the
contempt with which the Jews treated all appeals to the
Greek version, where it differed from their Hebrew text ;
and as he puzzled and confounded the learned Jews, by urg
ing upon them the reading n; Bxyxroy in this place ; it seeras
almost impossible not to conclude, both from Origen's argu
raent and the sUence of his Jewish adversaries, that the He
brew text at that tirae actually had ninb, agreeably to the
version of the LXX :" Dr Kennicott.
/^. But with the rich man was his tomb] Among the va-
' rious opinions which have been given on this passage, I have
no doubt in giving my assent to that which makes the a in
vnina radical, and renders it excelsa sua. This is mention
ed by Aben Ezra, as received by some in his time ; and has
been long since approved by Schindler, Drusius, and many
other learned Christian interpreters.
The most simple tombs or raonuraents of old consisted of
hillocks of earth heaped up over the grave : of which we
have numerous exaraples in our own country, generaUy
allowed to be of very high antiquity. The Romans called
a raonuraent of this sort very properly tumulus ; and the
Hebrews as properly mna, for that is the forra of the noun
in the singular nuraber; and sixteen MSS, and the two
oldest editions, express the word fully in this place, vnina.
" Tumulus et coUem et sepulchrum fuisse significat. Potest
enim tumulus sine sepulchro interpretatione coUis inter-
dura accipi. Nam et terrae congestio super ossa tumulus
dicitur:" Servius, in MneiA in, 22, And to make the
tumulus still more elevated and conspicuous, a pillar or
some other ornament was often erected upon it : —
Tv/iZoy 'x^vxyri;, xxi i-rri r/iXf,y i^vtrxyn;,
Jlti^xftly xxporxrm rvfiQa ivyi^i; i^irftoy. OdysS, xu, 14.
" A rising tomb, the silent dead to grace.
Fast by the roarings of the main we place ;
The rising tomb a lofty column bore,
And high above it rose the tapering oar." Pope.
The tomb therefore might with great propriety be called
the hio-h place. The Hebrews might also caU such a tomb
nina,''from the situation ; for they generally chose to erect
them on erainences. The sepulchre of Joseph of Ariraathea,
in which the body of Christ was laid, was upon ^ bUl,
Mount Calvary, See chap, xxii, 16, and the note there.

368 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LIIL
" It should be observed, that the word vmna is not
formed from mna, the plural of nna, the feminine noun,
but frora Dinina, the plural of a masculine noun, mna,
TTiis is noted, because these two nouns have been negligently
confounded with one another, and absurdly reduced to one,
by very learned men. So Buxtorff, Lex, in v, nna, repre
sents imna, though plainly without any pronoun suffixed,
as it governs the word yix following it, as only another
form of mna ; whereas the truth is, that mna and Dimna
are different words, and have through the whole Bible very
different significations : nna, whether occurring in the
singular or plural number, always signifying " a place, or
places, of worship;" and Dimna always signifying "heights,"
Thus in Deut, xxxu, 13, Isa, Iviii, 14, Amos iv, 13, and
Mic, i, 3, yix ininn signifies " the heights of the prth;"
Isa, xiv, 14, ar imna, " the heights of the clouds;" and
in Job ix, 8, Di imna, " the heights of- the sea," i. e. the
high waves of the sea, as VirgU calls a wave " prseruptus
aquffi mons," These being all the places where this word
occurs without a suffix, the sense of it seeras clearly deter
mined by them. It occurs in other instances with a pro
noun suffixed, which confirm this signification. Unluckily
our English Bible has not distinguished the ferainine noun
nna frora the raasculine singular noun mna ; and has con
sequently always given the signification of the latter to the
former, always rendering it " a high place ;" whereas the
true sense of the word appears plainly to be, in the very
numerous passages in which it occurs, " a place of worship,"
or " a sacred court," or " a sacred inclosure," whether ap^
propriated to the worship of idols, or J:o that of the true
God ; for it is used of both passim. Now, as the Jewish
graves are shewn, from 2 Chron, xxxii, 33, and Isa, xxii, 16,
to have been in high situations; to which may be added
the custom of another eastern nation from Osbeck's Tra
vels, who says, vol, i, p, 339, " The Chinese graves are
made on the side of hills ;" " his heights" becomes a very
easy raetaphor to express his sepulchre :" Dr Jubb,
'The exact completion of this prophecy will be fully shewn,
by adding here the several circumstances of the burial of
Jesus, collected frora the accounts of the Evangelists : —
" There was a rich raan of Arimathea, named Joseph, a
member of the Sanhedrim, and of a respectable character,
who had not consented to their counsel and act : he went

Chap. LIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 369
to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus ; and he laid it in
his ovm new tomb, which had been hewn out of the rock,
near to the place where Jesus was crucified ; having first
wound it in fine linen with spices, as the manner of the
Jews was to bury the rich and great,"
10, — with grief] For ibnn, the verb, the construction
of which seems to be hard and inelegant in this place, Vulg,
reads ibna, in infirmitate.
Ibid, If his soul shall make — ] For Diil?n, a MS has
Dll?n, which may be taken passively, " If his soul shall be
made — ," agreeably to some copies of LXX, which have
W«(,' So likewise Syr.
Il, — and be satisfied — ] LXX, Vulg, Syr, and a MS,
add the conjunction to the verb; raii?ii.
Ibid, — shall my servant justify] Three MSS (two of.
them ancient), omit the word pii:: ; it seeras to be only an
imperfect repetition, by mistake, of the preceding word. It
makes a solecism in this place ; for, according to the con
stant usage of the Hebrew language, the adjective, in a
phrase of this kind, ought to follow the substantive ; and
liar pil2f in Hebrew would be as absurd as " shall my ser
vant righteous justify," in English, Add to this, that it
makes the heraistich too long,
12, And made intercession — ] For riasi, in the future,
a MS has riasn, preterit; rather better, as agreeable with
the other verbs immediately preceding in the sentence.

CHAPTER LIV,
1, Shout for joy, O thou barren — ] The church of God
under the Old Testament, confined within the narrow
bounds of the Jevrish nation, and still more so in respect of
the very small number of true believers, and which some
tiraes seemed to be deserted of God her husband; is the
barren woman, that did not bear, and was desolate. She is
exhorted to rejoice, and to express her joy in the strongest
manner, on the reconcUiation of her husband, see ver, 6,
and on the accession of the Gentiles to her family. The
converted Gentiles are all along considered by the Prophet
as a new accession of adopted children, admitted into the
original church of God, and united with it. See chap,
xlix, 20, 21.

.370 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LIV.
4, For thou shalt forget] " Sharae of thy youth ; /, e.
the bondage of Egypt : widowhood, the captivity of Baby
lon :" Secker,
7. In a little anger — ] So the Chald. and Syr. either
reading rai for rai, or understanding the latter word as
meaning the same with the former, which they both make
use of. See Psal. xxx. 5. xxxv. 20, in LXX, where they
render rai by ogyo,
8, / hid my face \_for a moment] from thee] The word
rai is omitted by LXX, Syr, and two MSS, It seems to
erabarrass rather than to help die sentence, " Forte reponi
debet pro latri?, quod potest a ^atp errore scribae originera
duxisse:" Secker,
9, — as in the days of Noah] inia, in one word, in a
MS, and sorae editions ; and so Syr, Chald, Vulg, Syra,
Theod, Abarbanel, Salorao b. Melee, and Kirachi, ac
knowledge that their copies vary in this place,
11, 12, Behold, I lay thy stones — ] These seem to be
general images to express beauty, magnificence, purity,
strength, and solidity, agreeably to the ideas of the eastern
nations; and to have never been intended to be strictly
scrutinized, or minutely and particularly explained, as if
they had each of them some precise moral or spiritual
meaning, Tobit, in his prophecy of the final restoration of
Israel, describes the New Jerusalera in the same oriental
manner : " For Jerusalem shall be buUt up with sapphires,
and emeralds, and precious stones; thy walls, and towers,
and battlements, with pure gold. And the streets of Jeru
salera shall be paved with beryl, and carbuncle, and stones
of Ophir :" Tob. xiii. 16, 17. Corapare also Rev. xxi.
18—21.
15. — shall come over to thy side] For bisi, twenty-
eight MSS (eight ancient) have bsi, in its raore coraraon
form. For the meaning of the word in this place, see Jer.
xxxvii. 13.
CHAPTER LV.
9. For as the heavens are higher — ] I am persuaded
that a, the particle of coraparison, is lost in this place, fi-om
the likeness of the particle ia iramediately preceding it. So
Houbigant, and Secker. And their remark is confirmed
by all the ancient versions, which express it ; and by the

Chap. LV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 371
foUowing passage of Psalm cui. 11. which is almost the
same : — Vixn br Dinii; naaa ia
¦vxii br iiDn laa
" For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So high is his goodness over them that fear him."
Where, by the nature of the sentence, the verb in the
.second Une ought to be the same vrith that in the first : naa,
not laa : so Archbishop Secker conjectured; referring how
ever to Psal. cxvii. 2.
12. The mountains and the hills — ] These are highly
poetical images, to express a happy state attended with joy
and exultation. " Ipsi laetitia voces ad sidera jactant
Intonsi montes : ipsae jam carmina rupes,
Ipsa sonant arbusta." Virg. Eel. v.
13. Instead of the thorny bushes — ] These likewise (see
note on the preceding verse, and on chap. liv. 11.) are ge
neral poetical images, expressing a great and happy change
for the better. The wilderness turned into a paradise,
Lebanon into Carmel: the desert of the Gentiles watered
with the heavenly snow and rain, which fail not to have
their due effect, and becoming fruitful in piety and righte
ousness; or, as the Chaldee gives the moral sense of the
emblem, " instead of the wicked shall arise the just, and
instead of sinners, such as fear to sin." Compare ch. xxxv.
1, 2. xU. 19.
Ibid. And instead of — ] The conjunction 1 is added,
nnm, in forty-five MSS, and five editions; and it is ac
knowledged by all the ancient versions. The Masoretes
therefore might have safely received it into the text, and
not have referred us for it to the margin.

CHAPTER LVI.
j 5. —will I give them] For lb in the singular, it is evi
dent that we ought to read mb in the plural : so read LXX,
Syr. Chald. and Vulg.
7.  shall be accepted] A word is here lost out of die
text : it is supplied from the LXX, vni, iiroyrxi : Houbigant.
9, O aU ye beasts of the f eld — ] Here manifestly begins

373 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LVL
a new section. The Prophet, in the foregoing chapters,
having coraforted the-faithful Jews with many great promises
of God's favour to be extended to them, in the restoration
of their ruined state, and of the enlargement of his church
by the admission of the Gentiles ; here, on a sudden, raakes
a transition to the more disagreeable part of the prospect ;
and to a sharp reproof of the wicked and unbelievers, and
especially of the negligent and faithless governors and teach
ers, of the idolaters and hypocrites, who would still draw
down his judgments upon the nation : probably having in
view the destruction of their city and polity by the Chal
deans, and perhaps by the Romans, The same subject is
continued in the next chapter ; in which the charge of cor
ruption and apostasy becoraes more general against the
whole Jevrish church. Some expositors have made great
difficulties in the 9th verse of this chapter, where there seems
to be none. It is perfectly well explained by Jereraiah ;
where, having introduced God declaring his purpose of
punishing his people, by giving them up as a prey to their
enemies the Chaldeans, a charge to these his agents is given
in words very nearly the same with those of Isaiah in this
place : —
" I have forsaken my house ; I have deserted my heritage ;
I have given up the beloved of my soul into the hands of her
enemies. —
Come away, be ye gathered together, all ye beasts of the
field ;
Come away to devour," , Jer, xii, 7, 9,
Ibid, — beasts of the forest] Instead of iria, three MSS
have irS without the preposition: which seems to be right;
and is confirmed by all the ancient versions,
10, dumb dogs, they cannot bark] See below, note on
chap, Ixii, 6,
Ibid, Dreamers] Dim, iyv?ryix^ofiiyoi, LXX, This seems
to be the best authority for the meaning of this word, which
occurs only in this place : but it is to be observed, that three
MSS, and three editions, have Dnn; and so Vulg, seems to
have read, videntes vana.
12, — let us provide wine] For nnpx, first person sin
gular, an ancient MS has nnpa, first person plural; and
another ancient MS has px upon a rasure. So Syr, Chald,
and Vulg, render it.

Chap. LVIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 373

CHAPTER LVIL
2, He shall go in peace] Dibu? xiai : the expression is
elliptical, such as the Prophet frequently uses. The same
sense is expressed at large and in full terms, Gen, xv, 15,
Dibu?a Tmax bx xian nnxi, " And thou shalt go to thy
fathers in peace,"
Ibid, — he shall rest in his bed ; even the perfect man]
This obscure sentence is reduced to a perfectly good sense,
and easy construction, by an ingenious remark of Dr Du
rell, He reads Dn iaai2?n br ni3i. Two MSS (one of
them ancient) have ni3i, singular; and so Vulg, renders it,
requiescat, 'The verb was probably altered to make it plu
ral, and so consistent with what follows, after the mistake
had been made in the following words, by uniting iaau?n
and Dn into one word. See Merrick's Annotations on the
Psalms, Addenda; where the reader will find, that J, S,
Moerlius, by the same sort of correction, and by rescuing
the adjective Dn, which had been swallowed up in another
word in the same manner, has restored to a clear sense a
passage before absolutely unintelligible :¦ —
mb ma2jm px ia
, : Dbix xiiai Dn
" For no distresses happen to them ;
Perfect and firm is their strength," Psal, Ixxiii. 4,
6, Among the smooth stones of the valley — ] The Jews
were extremely addicted to the practice of raany supersti
tious and idolatrous rites, which the Prophet here inveighs
against with great vehemence. Of the worship of rude
stones consecrated, there are many testimonies of the an
cients. They were called BxiruXoi and BxirvXtxi probably
from the stone which Jacob erected at Bethel, pouring oU
upon the top of it. The practice was very coramon in dif
ferent ages and places. Arnobius, lib, i, gives an account
of his own practice in this respect, before he became a Chris
tian ; " Si quando conspexeram lubricatura lapidera, et ex
olivi unguine sordidatum ; tanquam inesset vis praesens,
adulabar, affabar, et beneficia poscebam nihU sentiente de
trunco," Cleraens Alex, Strom, lib. vii. speaks of a wor
shipper of every sraooth stone in a proverbial way, to denote
one given up to superstition. And accordingly Theophras
tus has marked this as one strong feature in the character
Ee

,374, NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LVII.
of the superstitious man : Kxi ray Xiicx^ay Xiiay ray ly rxi; Tgi»-
^oi; TTX^iay, lx rit; XvixvSov iXxioy xxrxy^n, xai iTti yoyxrx miray xxi
¦Fgoo-xvy-ziyx; xTrxxxx-rliirSxi : " Passing by the anointed stones
in the streets, he takes out his phial of oil, and pours it on
them ; and having fallen on his knees, and made his adora
tions, he departs."
8. Behind the door, and the door-posts, hast thou set thy
memorial] That is, the iraage of their tutelary gods, or
something dedicated to thera; in direct opposition to the
law of God, which comraanded them to write upon the
door-posts of their house, and upon their gates, the words
of God's law; Deut. vi. 9. xi. 20. If they chose for them
such a situation as more private, it was in defiance of a
particular curse denounced in the law against the man who
should make a graven or a molten image, and put it in a
secret place; Deut. xxvii. 15. An ancient MS, with ano
ther, has mx, without the conjunction i.
9. And thou hast visited the king with a present of oil]
That is, the king of Assyria, or Egypt. Hosea reproaches
the Israelites for the sarae practice : —
" They make a covenant with Assyria,
And oil is carried to Egypt." Hosea xii. 1.
It is well known, that in all parts of the East, whoever visits
a great person must carry him a present. " It is counted
uncivU," says MaundreU, p. 26. " to visit in this country
without an offering in hand. All great men expect it as a
tribute due to their character and authority ; and look upon
theraselves as affronted, and indeed defrauded, when the
compliment is omitted." Hence lie?, to visit a person, is
equivalent to making him a present: and nilii?n signifies
a present made on such occasions ; as our translators have
rightly rendered it, I Sam. ix. 7. : on Which Jarchi says,
" Menachem exponit niiii?n quod significet oblationem sive
munus, ut aliquis aspiciat faciem regis, aut alicujus magnatis."
10. Thou hast said, There is no hope] In one of the
MSS at Koningsberg, collated by Lilienthal, the words
ninx xb are left in the text unpointed, as suspected; and
in the margin the corrector has written iinxm. Now, if
we compare Jer. ii. 25. and xviii. 12. we shall find, that the
subject is in both places quite the same with this of Isaiah,
and the sentiment expressed, that of a desperate resolution
to continue at all hazard in their idolatrous practices ; the
very thing that in all reason we might expect here. Pro
bably therefore the latter is the true reading in this place.

Chap. LVIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 375
11. —nor revolved it—] Eight MSS (four ancient),
and the two oldest editions, with another, add the conjunc
tion 1, xbi : which is confirmed by all the ancient versions.
Ibid. — and winked] For Dbirni, which makes no good
sense or construction in this place, twenty-three MSS
(seven ancient), and three editions, have Dbrn, (to be thus
pointed Dbrn) ; -rcx^oi^a, LXX; quasi non videns, Vulg. : see
Psal. X. I. The truth of this reading so confirmed admits
of no doubt.
12. — my righteousness] For Tnpis, thy righteousness,
Syr. LXX, MSS Alex, and Pachom. and i. D. ii., and
Marchal. and li r, and Arab, read inpis, my righteousness,
13, — let thine associates deliver thee] Thirty-nine MSS
(ten ancient), and the two oldest editions, have ^1b13t1, plural,
14, then will I say] mxi, to be pointed as the first per
son future : they are the words of God, as it is plain from
the conclusion of the verse; my people, inr-
15, For thus saith Jehovah] A MS adds nini after
inx, and edition Prag, 1518, So LXX, Alex, and Arab,
An ancient MS adds ni.
Ibid, And with the contrite — ] Twelve MSS have nx,
without the conjunction i, " Pro nxi, forte legendum
nxixi : confer Psal. cxiii. 5. et cxxxviU. 6. :" Secker.
16. For I will not alway — ] The learned have taken a
great deal of pains to little purpose on the latter part of this
verse, which they suppose to be very obscure. After all their
labours upon it, I think the best and easiest explication of it
is given in the two following elegant passages of the Psalms,
which I presume are exactly parallel to it, and very clearly
express the same sentiment,
" But He in his tender mercy will forgive their sin,
And will not destroy them ;
Yea oftentimes will he turn away his wrath.
And will not rouse up all his indignation :
For he remembereth that they are but flesh,
A breath that passeth, and ret-arneth not," Ixxviii. 38, 39.
" He will not always contend,
Neither will he for ever hold his wrath :
As a father yearneth towards his children.
So is Jehovah tenderly compassionate towards them that
fear him :
For he knoweth our frame ;
He remembereth that we are but dust." ciii, 9. 13, 14.
In the forraer of these two passages, the second line seeras
to be defective both in measure and sense : I suppose the

.376 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LVII.
word Dmx, them, is lost at the end; which seems to be ac
knowledged by Chald, and Vulg, who render as if they had
read, Dmx ninii?i xbi.
17, Because of his iniquity for a short time I was wroth]
For irxa, I read rsa, paululum, a rsa, abscidit; as LXX
read and render it, fi^xx^ n. " Propter iniquitatem avaritice
ejus" the rendering of Vulg,, which our translators, and I
believe all others follow, is surely quite beside the purpose,
19, I create the fruit of the lips ; — ] " The sacrifice of
praise," saith St Paul, Heb, xiii, 15, " is the fruit of the lips,"
God creates this fruit of the Ups, by giving new subject and
cause of thanksgiving, by his raercies conferred on those
among his people who acknowledge and bewail their trans
gressions, and return to him. The great subject of thanks
giving is peace ; reconciliation and pardon offered to them
that are nigh, and to them that are afar off; not only to the
Jew, but also to the Gentile, as St Paul raore than once
applies these terras, Eph, ii, 13, 17, : see also Acts ii, 39.
21. There is no peace, saith my God — ] For inbx,
twenty-two MSS (five ancient) read mni. Vulg. LXX,
Alex. Arab, and three MSS, have both. This verse has
reference to the 19th. The wicked and impenitent are ex
cluded from all share in that peace above-mentioned, that
reconcilement and pardon, which is proraised to the penitent
only. The xlviiith chapter ends with the sarae declaration ;
to express the exclusion of the unbelievers and impenitent
from the benefit of the foregoing promises.
CHAPTER LVIIL
3. — afflicted our souls — ] Twenty-seven MSS (six an
cient), and the old edition of 1488, have the noun in the
plural nuraber, iaiii?S3 : and so LXX, Chald. Vulg.
4. And to smite with the fist the poor. Wherefore fast ye
unto me — ] I follow the version of the LXX, which gives
a rauch better sense than the present reading of the Hebrew.
Instead of xb rn?i) they seem to have read in their copy
lb nn br ii?i : the four first letters are the same, but other
wise divided in regard to the words ; the'four last are lost,
and X added in their place, in order to make some sort of
sense with b rii?i. The version of the LXX is xxi rvrflin
TTvyfAxi; rxTTiivoy' iyx ri fAoi yyirsvm — '  .
7. — the wandering poor — ] vla^ou; x^-it/ov;, LXX ; ege-
nos vagosque, Vulg.; and jibablsn, .Chald. They read, in-

Chap. LVIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 377
Stead of Dimn, Dilisn, in is upon a rasure in the Bodleian
MS, The same MS reads nnia, in domum.
8. And thy wounds shall speedily be healed] " Et cica
trix vulneris tui cito obducetur." AquUa's version, as re
ported by Jerom ; with which agrees that of the Chaldee.
IhiA. And the glory— ] Sixteen MSS (five ancient),' and
LXX, Syr, Vulg, add the conjunction i, naai.
10, If thou bring forth thy bread — ] " To draw out thy
soul to the hungry," as our translators rightly enough ex
press the present Hebrew text, is an obscure phrase, and
without example in any other place. But instead of T11?S3,
thy soul, eight MSS (tliree ancient) read Tnnb, thy bread;
and so the Syriac renders it. The LXX express both
words, Ton xgroy lx rti; -^v^ffl; o-y, thy bread from thy soul.
11, And he shall renew thy strength] " Chaldasus forte
legit ;inn^r r^ibni. Confer cap, xl, 29, 31, et xli, 1,:"
Secker! Chald, has xnbr "na "ni ^S1a1, " et corpus
tuum vivificabit in vita aeterna," The rest of the ancients
seem not to know what to make of yibni ; and the render
ing of the Vulgate, which seems to be the only proper one,
ossa tua liberabit, raakes no sense, I follow this excellent
emendation; to favour which, it is still further to be observed,
that three MSS, instead of Tinnsr, have Tnnsr, singular,
12, — to be frequented by inhabitants] To this purpose
it is rendered by Syr, Sym, and Theod,
13. From doing thy pleasure] The LXX, Syr, and Chald,
for niu?r manifestly express mii?rn. So likewise a MS has
it; but vrith the omission of the words ^ibai nan?.
Ibid, And the holy feast] Twenty-eight MSS (seven an
cient) add the conjunction 1, I2?npbi : and so Syr. and Chald,
Ibid, — and from speaking vain words] It is necessary
to add some epithet to raake out the sense : the LXX say
angry words ; Chald, words of violence. If any such epithet
is lost here, the safest way is to supply it By the Prophet's
own expression, ver, 9, px laii, vainvforAs; that is, pro
fane, impious, injurious, &c,
" The additional epithet seems unnecessary. The Vulg.
and Syr, have it not. And the sense is good without it;
two ways, first by taking laii for a noun, and iai for the
participle pahul, and rendering,
" From pursuing thy pleasure, and the thing resolved on :"
Or secondly, by supposing the force of the preposition n
to be continued from the verb xisnn to the verb lan ira
mediately following, and rendering,

.378 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LVIII.
" From executing thy pleasure, and frora speaking words
concerning it,"
But the first seems the easier rendering." Dr Jubb.

CHAPTER LIX.
The foregoing elegant chapter contained a severe reproof
of the Jews, in particular for their hypocrisy in pretending
to make themselves accepted with God by fasting and out
ward hurailiation without true repentance, while they still
continued to oppress the poor, and to indulge their own
passions and vices ; with great proraises, however, of God's
favour on condition of their reformation. This chapter con
tains a more general reproof of their wickedness ; bloodshed,
violence, falsehood, injustice. Ajt ver. 9. they are introduced
as making themselves an ample confession of their sins, and
deploring their wretched state in consequence of them. On
this act of humUiation a proraise is given, that God, in his
mercy and zeal for his people, wiU rescue them from this
miserable condition; that the Redeemer will come like a
mighty hero to deliver them : he will destroy his enemies,
convert both Jews and GentUes to hiraself, and give theni a
new covenant, and a law, which shall never be abolished.
As this chapter is remarkable for the beauty, strength,
and variety of the images -with which it abounds ; so is it
peculiarly distinguished by the elegance of the composition,
and the exact construction of the sentences : from the first
verse to the two last, it falls regularly into stanzas of four
lines, (see Prel. Dissert, p. xiii.), which I have endeavoured
to express as nearly as possible in the form of the original.
. 2. His face — ] For Di3S, faces, I read vas, his face.
So Syr. LXX, Alex. Arab. Vulg. i3S, MS. " Forte legen
dum las ; nam n sequitur, et loquitur Deus: confer Iviii.
14. :" Secker* I rather think that the speech of God was
closed with the last chapter ; and that this chapter is de
livered in the person of the Prophet.
3, And your tongue — ] An ancient MS, and LXX and
Vidg, add the conjunction,
8. Whoever goeth in them — ] For na singular, read Da
plural, with LXX, Syr, Vulg, Chald, The n is upon a
rasure in MS, Or for Dninains plural, we must read
onains singular, as it is in an ancient MS, to preserve the
grammatical concord.

Chap. LIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 379
10. A7id We wander—] I adopt here an emendation of
Houbigant, naaii?3, instead of the second mi?ii7a3, the repe
tition of which has a poverty and inelegance extremely 'un
worthy of the Prophet, and unUke his raanner. The mis
take is of long standing, being prior to all the ancient
versions: it was a very easy and obvious mistake; and I
have litde doubt of our having recovered the true reading
in this ingenious correction.
11. — and it is far distant from us.] The conjunction 1
must necessarUy be prefixed to the verb, as Syr. Chald.
Vulg, found it in their copies, nt^nii,
15, And Jehovah saw it,  ] This third Une
of the stanza appears manifestly to me to be iraperfect by
the loss of a phrase. The reader wUl perhaps more per
fectly conceive my idea of the matter, if I endeavour to sup
ply the supposed defect, I iraagine it might have stood
originally in this manner :
[lb mil] nini xiii
: Bsii?n px ia vaira riii
" And Jehovah saw it, [and he was wroth] ;
And it displeased him, that there was no judgment,"
We have had already many examples of mistakes of omis
sion : this, if it be such, is very ancient, being prior to all
the versions,
17, —for his clothing] m2?abn, " I cannot but think
that mi?abn is an interpolation, 1, It is in no one an
cient version, 2. It is redundant in the sense, as it is before
expressed in ^laa. 3, It makes the hemistich just so much
longer than it ought to be, if it is corapared with the others
adjoining, 4, It makes a form of construction in this clause
less elegant than that in the others. 5. It raight probably
be in some raargin a various reading for naa, and thence
taken into the text. This is the more probable, as its form
is such as it would be if it were in regimine, as it must be
before Dp3 :" Dr Jubb.
18. He is mighty — ] The former part of this verse, as
it stands at present in the Hebrew text, seems to me to be
very imperfect, and absolutely unintelligible. The learned
Vitringa has taken a great deal of pains upon it, after
Cocceius; who, he says, is the only one of aU the interpre
ters ancient or modern, who has at all understood it, and
has 'opened the way for him. He thinks, that both of thera
together have clearly raade out the sense : I do not expect

380 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LIX.
that any third person will ever be of that opinion. He
says, " Videtur sententia ad verbura sonare : quasi propter
facta [adversariorum] quasi propter rependet ; excandescen-
tiam, &c, et sic reddidit Pagninus," This he converts, by
a process which will not much edify my reader, into " Se
cundum sumrae merita, secundum summe [merita] repen
det ;" which is his translation. They that hold the present
Hebrew text to be absolutely infallible, must make their way
through it as they can ; but they ought surely to give us
somewhat that has at least the appearance of sense. How
ever, I hope the case here is not quite desperate : the Chal
dee leads us very fairly to the correction of the text, which
is both corrupted and defective. The paraphrase runs
thus: Dbii?i xbna xin xibna iin, "Dominus retributionum
ipse retributionem reddet." He manifestly read bra, in
stead of bra, xibna iin is mbna bra ; as xnnnn iin is
f|X bra, Prov, xxii, 24, And so in the same Chaldee para
phrase on Isaiah xxxv, 4, ibjni xm " xibna iin, " Domi
nus retributionum Jehovah ipse revelabitur," Words very
near to those of the Prophet in this place. The second
bra, which the Chaldee has omitted, must be read bra
likewise. With this only addition to the Chaldee, which the
Hebrew text justifies, we are supplied with the following
clear reading of the passage ; —
xm mbma bra
,Dbii?i mbma bra
The a in bra twice seems to have been at first a in MS,
This verse in LXX is very iraperfect. In the first part
of it they give us no assistance; the last part is wholly
oraitted in the printed copies; but it is thus supplied in
MSS Pachora, and I, D, II, — roi; It-Ttiyxyrioi; avry xicvtxy roii
l^Sgoi; xvry rxi; y-^trei; xvooo^x x-Troritrii.
19, — which a strong wind driveth along] " Quam spi-
ritus Domini cogit:" Vulg, nDDia, pihel a D13 fugit,
Kimchi says, his father thus explamed this word: " nDDi3
interpretatur in significatione fugae ; et ait, Spiritus Domini
fugabit hostem; — nam secundum eura nDDl3 est ex conju-
gatione quadrata, ejusque radix est D13," The object of this
action I explain otherwise. The conjunction i prefixed to
nil seems necessary to the sense : it is added by the correc
tor in one of the Koningsberg MSS coUated by Lilienthal,
20, And shall turn away iniquity from Jacob] So LXX,
and St Paul, Rom, xi, 26, ; reading, instead of iail?b and
apria, ain?ni and aprin. Syr. likewise reads aiii?ni ; and

Chap. LIX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 381
Chald, to the sarae sense, aiii?nbi. Our translators have
expressed the sense of the present reading of the Hebrew
text : " And unto them that turn from tran.sgression in
Jacob," "
21, — which I make with them] For Dmx, them, twenty-
four MSS (four ancient) and nine editions have onx, with
them.
CHAPTER LX,
The subject of this chapter is the great increase and
flourishing state of the church of God, by the conversion and
accession of the heathen nations to it ; which is set forth in
such ample and exalted terras as plainly shew, that the full
completion of this prophecy is reserved for future times.
This subject is displayed in the most splendid colours, under
a great variety of images highly poetical, designed to give
a general idea of the glories of that perfect state of the
church of God which we are taught to expect in the latter
times ; when the fuhiess of the GentUes shall come in, and
the Jews .shall be converted and gathered from their disper
sions; and the kingdoms of this world shall become the
kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ,
Of the use in prophecy of general or common poetical
images, in setting forth the greatness and iraportance of a
future event universally, without descending to particulars,
or too minutely explaining circurastances, I have already
pretty largely treated in the xxth Prelection on the Hebrew
Poetry ; and have more than once observed in these notes,
that such iraages are not always to be applied" particularly
to persons and things, and were never intended to be
rainutely explained, I shall add here the opinion of a very
learnedand judiciousperson upon this subject: " It is, Ithink,
a raark of right understanding in the language of prophecy,
and in the design of prophecy too, to keep to what appears
the design and meaning of the prophecy in general, and
what the whole of it, laid together, points out to us ; and
not to suffer a warm iraagination to mislead us from the real
intention of the spirit of prophecy, by following uncertain
applications of the parts of it :" Lowman on the Revelation,
note on chap, xix, 21,
4,  shall be carried at the side] For nanxn, shall be
nursed, LXX and Chald, read nsxwan, shall be carried.
A Ms'has naxwan ^na br, instead of nanxn ia br ; shall

382 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LX.
be carried on the shoulder, instead of shall be nursed on the
side. Another MS has both ^na and I2t, Another MS
has it thus: nsnxn : n3xii?3n, with a line drawn over the
first word. Sir John Chardin says, that it is the general
custom in the East to carry their children astride upon the
hip, with the arm round their body. His MS note on this
place is as follows : " Couturae en Orient de porter les en
fans sur le coste a califourchon sur la hanche : cette fa^on
est generate aux Indes ; les enfans se tiennent corarae cela,
et la personne qui les porte les erabrasse et serre par le
corps ; parceque sont [ni] eraraaUlottes, ni en robes qui les
embrassent," " Non brachiis occidentalium more, .sed humeris, diva-
ricatis tibiis, impositos circumferunt :" Cotovic, Iter Syr,
cap, xiv. This last quotation seems to favour the reading
tina br ; as the LXX likewise do: but upon the whole I
think that n3Xii?3n,l2i br is the true reading, which the
Chaldee favours ; and I have accordingly foUowed it. See
chap, Ixvi, 12,
5, Then shalt thoufear^-] For ixin, thou shalt see, as
ours, and much the greater number of the translators, an
cient and modern, render it; forty MSS (ten ancient), and
the old edition of 1488, have ixiirt, thou shalt fear ; the
true reading, confirraed by the perfect parallelism of the
sentences : the heart riffled and dilated in the second line
answering to the fear and joy expressed in the first. The
Prophet Jeremiah (chap, xxxiii, 9,) has the same natural
and elegant sentiment : —
" And [this city] shall become to me a name of joy ;
A praise and an honour for all the nations of the earth ;
Which shall hear all the good that 1 do unto them ;
And they shall fear, and they shall tremble, at all the good
ness.
And at all the prosperity, that I procure unto her,"
And David, (Psal, cxxxix, 14,)
" I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
" His tibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit atque horror," Lucret, iii, 28,
" Recenti mens trepidat metu,
Plenoque Bacchi pectore turbidum
Laetatur," Hor, Carm, ii, 19,
6, And the praise of Jehovah—] Thirty-three MSS
and three editions have nbnni, in the singular number; and
so read the ancient versions.

Chap. LX. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 383
7. Unto thee shall the rams of Nebaioth minister] Vi
tringa (on the place) understands their ministering, and
ascending, or going up on the altar, as offering themselves
voluntarily : " Ipsi se, non expectato sacerdote alio, gloriae
et sanctificationi Divini norainis ultro ac libenter oblaturi,"
This gives a very elegant and poetical turn to the iraage.
It was a general notion that prevaUed with sacrificers araong
the heathen, that the victira's being brought without reluc
tance to the altar wa.s a good omen ; and the contrary a bad
one. " Sabinos petit aUquanto tristior ; quod sacrificanti
hostia aufugerat :" Sueton. Titus, cap. x, " Accessit dirum
oraen, profugus altaribus taurus :" Tacit, Hist, ui, 56,
8, And like doves upon the wing] Instead of bx, to, forty-
two MSS have br, upon. For Dninaix, their windows,
read Dniniax, their wings, transposing a letter: Houbi
gant, T^he \j^^ renAer it <rvy yio(ro-oi;, with their young : they
read DniniSX; nearer to the latter, than to the present
reading, 9, — among the first — ] For n3ii?xia, twenty-five MSS
and Syr. read n3U?xiaa, as at the first.
13. — the place whereon I rest my feet] The temple of
Jerusalera was caUed the house of God, and the place of his
rest or residence : the visible symbolical appearance of God,
called by the Jews the Shechinah, was in the raost holy
place, between the wings of the cherubim above the ark.
This is considered as the throne of God, presiding as king
over the Jewish state ; and as a footstool is a necessary ap
pendage of a throne, (see note on chap. Iii. 2.), the ark is
considered as the footstool of God ; and is so called, Psal.
xcix. 5. 1 Chron. xxviii. 2,
Ibid, The glory of Lebanon] That is, the cedar,
19, Nor by night shall the brightness of the moon enlight
en thee] This line, as it stands in the present text, seems
to be defective. The LXX and Chald, both express the
night, which is almost necessary to answer to day in the
preceding line, as well as to perfect the sense here, I there
fore think that we ought, upon the authority of LXX and
Chald, to read either nbibi, and by night, instead of na3bi,
and for brightness; or nbiba na3bi, adding the word nbiba,
by night.
2 1 ,  of my planti7ig] ir to n , so with the Keri read forty-
four MSS (seven ancient) and six editions; with which
agree Syr, Chald. Vulg.-

384 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LX.

CHAPTER LXI.
1, The Spirit of Jehovah— ] The LXX, Vulg, and St
Lukeiv, 18, and MS, and two old editions, omit the word
131X, the Lord; which was probably added to the text
through the superstition of the Jews, to prevent the pronun
ciation of the word nini following. See Kennicott on the
State of the Printed Heb, Text, i, p, 510,
Ibid, —perfect liberty] Ten MSS and one edition have
nipnps in one word ; and so the LXX and Vulg, appear
to have taken it.
The proclaiming of perfect liberty to the bounden, and
the year of acceptance with Jehovah, is a raanifest aUusion
to the proclaiming of the year of jubilee by sound of trum
pet : see Lev, xxv, 9, &c. This was a year of general re
lease — of debts and obligations ; of bond men and women ;
of lands and possessions, which had been sold from the
families and tribes to which they belonged. Our Saviour,
by applying this text to hiraself, Luke iv, 18, 19, a text so
manifestly relating to the institution above-mentioned, plainly
declares the typical design of that institution,
• 3, To impart \_gladness] to the mourners] A word ne
cessary to the sense is certainly lost in this place ; of which
the ancient versions have preserved no traces, Houbigant,
by conjecture, inserts the word pTi?iZ?, gladness, taken from
the line next but one below, where it stands opposed to
bax, sorrow, or mour7iing; as the word lost here was to
ibax, mou7-ners: I follow hira.
Ibid, — a beautiful croivn, instead of ashes] In tiraes of
mourning the Jevsp put on sackcloth, or coarse and sordid
raiment ; and spread dust and ashes on their heads : on the
contrary, splendid clothing, and ointment poured on the
head, were the signs of joy, " Feign thyself to be a mourn
er," says Joab to the woman of Tekoah, " and put on now
mourning apparel, and anoint not thyself with oil ;" 2 Sam,
xiv, 2, These customs are at large expressed in the book of
Judith : " She pulled off the sackcloth which she had on,
and put off the garments of her widowhood, and washed her
body all over with water, and anointed herself with precious
ointment, and braided the hair of her head, and put on a tire
[mitre, marg.J upon it; and put on her garraents of glad
ness;" chap, X, 3,
Phear, instead of apher ; a paronomasia, which the Pro-

Chap. LXL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 385
phet often uses : a chaplet, crown, or other ornament of the
head, (for so the Vulgate renders the word here, and in the
10th verse ; in which last place the LXX agree in the same
rendering), instead of dust and ashes, which before covered
it ; and the costly ointments used on occasion of festirity,
instead of the ensigns of sorrow.
Ibid, — trees approved] Heb, oaks of righteousness, or
truth; that is, such as by their flourishing condition should
shew that they were indeed " the cion of God's planting, and
the work of his hands :" under which images, in the preceding
chap, ver, 21, the true servants of God, in a highly iraproved
state of the church, were represented ; that is, says Vitringa
on that place, " coramendable for the strength of their faith,
their durability, and firmness."
4. And they that sp7-ingfrom thee] A word is lost here
likewise. After I3ai, they shall build, add '\Ta'a, they that
spring _/?-o??z thee. Four MSS have it so, (two of them
ancient), and it is confirraed by chap. Iviii. 12, where the
sentence is the very sarae, this word being here added,
Kirachi raakes the same reraark : " the word "jnn is omitted
here ; but is found in chap, Iviii, 12,"
7, Instead of your shame — ] The translation of this
verse, which is very confused, and probably corrupted in the
- Hebrew, is taken from the Syriac version ; except that the
latter has not expressed the word n3ii?n, double, in the first
place. Five MSS add the conjunction i to nnnii?, Syr,
reads I3in and iiriin in the second person, " ye .shall re
joice, ye shall inherit," And for Dnb, to them, two MSS
(one of them ancient), and Syr, read Dab, to you, in the
second person likevrise.
The version of the LXX is imperfect in this place : the
-first half of the verse is entirely oraitted in all the printed
copies. It is supplied by MSS Pachora, and i. D. ii, in the
following manner :
Ayr I T>)5 xitr^vyvi; vfAay n/i; ci-rXni;,
Kxi xtri T1J5 lyr^o-rrn; xyxXXixa-irxi « fil^i; xvray-
Aix ryro rvty ytiv xvray ix divri^y  •
In which the two MSS agree, except that i, D. ii, has by
mistake if^i^x, for i foi^i;. And Cod. Marchal, in the raargin,
has pretty nearly the same suppleraent as from Theodotion.
8. — and iniquity] Syr, and Chald, prefix the con
junction 1, instead of the preposition a, to nbir ; which they
render iniquity or oppression ; and so the LXX, uhxix;.
10. As the brideg7-oom decketh himself with a priestly

38G NOTES ON ISAIAH. , Chap. LXI.
crown] An allusion to the magnificent dress of the High
Priest, when performing his functions ; and particularly to
the mitre, and crown, or plate of gold on the front of it ;
Exod, xxix,' 6, The bonnet or mitre of the priests also was
made, as Moses expresses it, " for glory and for beauty ;"
Exod, xxvUi, 40, It is difficult to give its full force to the
Prophet's metaphor in another language; the version of
Aquila and Symmachus comes nearest to it: a; yufi^ioy
ii^xrivofiiyoy ^i^xya.
11, The Lord Jehovah — ] " i3ix, the Lord, makes the
line longer than the preceding and following : and LXX,
Alex, [and MSS Pachom, and i, D, ii,] and Arab, do not
render it. Hence it seems to be interpolated :" Dr Jubb,
Three MSS have it not : See note on ver. 1. of this chapter,
CHAPTER LXII,
5, For as a young man — so — ] The particles of com
parison are not at present in the Hebrew text; but the
LXX, Syr, and Chald, seera to have read in their copies
a prefixed to the verb braia ia, which seems to have been
omitted by mistake of a transcriber, occasioned by the repe
tition of the same two letters. And before the verb in the
second line a MS adds p, so ; which the LXX, Syr, and
Chald, seem also to have had in their copies. In the third
line of this verse the same MS has in like raanner iriii?nai,
and two MSS and the Babylonish Talmud Tl?ii!?na, adding
the a : and in the fourth line, the Babylonish Talraud like
wise adds p, so, before the verb.
Sir John Chardin, in his note on this place, teUs us, " that
it is the custora in the East for youths, that were never mar
ried, always to marry virgins ; and widowers, however young,
to marry widows :" Harmer, Observ, ii, p, 482,
Ibid, — -thy restorer — ] -1133 ; see note on chap, xlix, 17,
6, 0 ye that proclaim — ] The faithful, and in particu
lar the priests and Levites, are exhorted by the Prophet to
beseech God, with unremitted importunity, (compare Luke
xviii, 1, &c.), to hasten the redemption of Sion, The iraage
in this place is taken from the temple service ; in which there
was appointed a constant watch, day and night, by the Le
vites : and among them this service seeras to have belonged
particularly to the singers ; see 1 Chron, ix, 33, Now the
watches in the East, even to this day, are performed by a loud
cry from time to time of the watchmen, to mark the time, and

Chap. LXIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. 387
that very frequently, and in order to shew that they thera
selves are constandy attentive to their duty. Hence the
watchmen are said by the Prophet, chap, hi, 8. to lift up
their voice; and here they are commanded, not to keep
silence; and the greatest reproach to them is, that they are
dumb dogs; they cannot bark; dreamers, sluggards, loving to
slumber : chap, Iri, 10, « The watehraen in the carap of the
caravans go tiieir rounds, crying one after another, ' God
is One, He is merciful;' and often add, ' Take heed to
yourselves:'" Tavernier, Voyage de Perse, liv, i, chap, x.
The cxxxivth Psalm gives us an exaraple of the temple
watch. The whole Psalm is nothing more than the alternate
cry of two different divisions of the watch. The first watch
addresses the second, reminding them of their duty; the
second answers by a solemn blessing : the address and the
answer seem bodi to be a set form, which each division pro
claimed, or sung aloud, at stated intervals, to notify the tirae
of the night : —
First Chorus,
" Come on now, bless ye Jehovah, aU ye servants of Jehovah ;
Ye that stand in the house of Jehovah in the nights :
Lift up your hands towards the sanctuary,
And bless ye Jehovah,"
Second Chorus,
" Jehovah bless thee out of Sion ;
He that made heaven and earth."
" Qui statis i7i loco custodies domus sanctuarii JehovjE,
et laudatis per noctes ;" says the Chaldee paraphrase on the
second line. And this explains what is here particularly
raeant by proclaiming, or making reraembrance of, the name
of Jehovah, The form which the watch made use of on
these occasions was always a short sentence, expressing some
pious sentiment, of which Jehovah was the subject: and it
is remarkable, that the custom in the East in this respect
also still continues the very same ; as it appears ,by the ex
araple above given frora Tavernier,
And this observation leads to the explanation of an ob
scure passage in the Prophet Malachi, ii, 12,
" Jehovah will cut off the man that doeth this;
,The watchman and the answerer, from the tabernacles of
Jacob ;
And him that presenteth an offering to Jehovah God of
Hosts."

389 NOTES ON ISAIAH. , Chap. LXIL
n3ri ir, the master and the scholar , says our translation after
Vulg, ; the son and the grandso7i, says Syr, and Chald, as lit'-
tie to the purpose : Arias Montanus has given it, vigilantem
ct respondentem, the watchman and the answerer ; that is, the
Lerite : and him that presenteth an offering to Jehovah ,-
that is, the priest,
9, But they that reap the harvest shall eat it, and praise
Jehovah — ] This and the foUowing line have reference to
the law of Moses: " Thou mayest not eat within thy gates
the tithe of thy corn, or of thy wine, or of thy oil ; — but thou
must eat thera before the Lord thy God, in the place which
the Lord thy God shall choose;" Deut, xu, 17, 18, " And
when ye shall corae into the land, and shall have planted all
manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit there
of as uncircumcised : three years it shall be as uncircumcised
unto you ; it shall not be eaten of. But in the fourth year
all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal.
And in the fifth year ye shall eat the fruit thereof:" Lev, xix.
23 — 25. This clearly explains the force of the expressions,
" shall praise Jehovah," and " shaU drink it in my sacred
courts," Five MSS (one ancient) have mibaxs fully expressed:
and so likewise mimi?i is found in nineteen MSS, three of
them ancient.
10, —for the people] Before the word b:fn,. the people,
two MSS insert mni, Jehovah; one MS adds the same
word after it; and eight MSS (three ancient), instead of
Drn have nini, and so likewise one edition. But though
it makes a good sense either way, I beUeve it to be an inter
polation, as the ancient versions do not favour it. The
LXX indeed read mr, my people.
1 1 , — Lo ! thy Saviour — ] So aU the ancient versions
render the word Tril?i,
Ibid, Lo ! his reward — ] See note on chap, xl, 10,

CHAPTER LXIII,
The very remarkable passage with which this chapter be
gins, seeras to me to be in a manner detached from the rest,
and to stand singly by itself; having no immediate connec
tion with what goes before, or with what follows ; otherwise
than as it may pursue the general design, and stand in its
proper place in the order of prophecy. It is by many learned

Chap. LXIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. .389
interpreters supposed, that Judas Maccabeus and his victories
raake the subject of it. What claira Judas can have to so
great an honour, will, I think, be very difficult to raake
out ; or how the attributes of the great person introduced
can possibly suit him. Could Judas caU himself the an
nouncer of righteousness, mighty to save ? Could he talk of
the day of vengeance being in his heart, and the year of his
redeemed being come ? or that his own arra wrought salvation
for hira ? Besides, what were the great exploits of Judas in
regard to the Idumeans ? he overcame them in battle, and
slew twenty thousand of them: and John Hyrcanus, his
brother Simon's son and successor, who is called in to help
out the accoraplishment of the prophecy, gave thera another
defeat some tirae afterward, and compelled them by force to
becorae pi-oselytes to the Jewish religion, and to subrait to
circumcision ; after which they were incorporated with the
Jews, and became one people with them. Are these events
adequate to the Prophet's lofty prediction ? Was it so great
an action to win a batde with considerable slaughter of the
enemy ; or to force a whole nation by dint of the sword into
Judaism ? or was the conversion of the Idumeans, however
effected, and their admission into the church of God, equi
valent to a most grievous judgment and destruction threat
ened in the severest terms ? — But here is another very ma
terial circumstance to be considered, which, I presume, en
tirely excludes Judas Maccabeus, and even the Idumeans
properly so called : The Idumea of the Prophet's time was
quite a different country from that which Judas conquered ;
for, during the Babylonish captivity, the Nabatheans had
driven the Edomites out of their country, who upon that took
possession of the southern parts of Judea, and settled them
selves there ; that is, in the country of the whole tribe of
Simeon, and in half of that of Judah : See Prideaux, ad An,
740 et 165, : And the metropohs of the Edoraites, and of
the country thence called Idumea, which Judas took, was
Hebron, 1 Mace, v, 65, not Botsra,
I conclude, therefore, that this prophecy has not the least
relation to Judas Maccabeus, It may be asked, To whora,
and to what event does it relate ? I can only answer, that
I know of no event in history to which, from its iraportance
and circumstances, it can be appUed; unless perhaps to the
destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish polity, which in
the gospel is called the coming of Christ, and the days of

390 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LXIII.
vengeance ; Matt, xvi, 28, Luke xxi, 22, But, though this
prophecy must have its accomplishment, there is no necessity
of supposing that it has been already accomplished. There
are prophecies, which intimate a great slaughter of the
enemies of God and his people, which remain to be fulfiUed,
Those in Ezekiel, chap, xxxviii, and in the Revelation of St
John, chap, xx, are called Gog and Magog. This prophecy
of Isaiah may possibly refer to the same or the like event.
We need not be at a loss to determine the person who is
here introduced as stained with treading the wine-press, if
we consider how St John in the Revelation has applied this
image of the Prophet; Rev. xix. 13. 15, 16.: compare
chap, xxxiv,
1, / xvho announce 7-ighteousness, and — ] A MS has
lainn, with the demonstrative article added, with greater
force and emphasis, The announcer of righteousness, A
MS has npis, without a prefixed; and so LXX and Vulg,
And thirty-eight MSS (seven ancient) add the conjunction
1 to ai ; which the LXX, Syr, and Vulg, confirm,
2, Wherefore is thine apparel red — ] For li2?iabb, twenty-
nine MSS (nine ancient), and one edition, have "[iwiabb in
the plural : so LXX tuid Syr, And all the ancient ver
sions read it with n instead of the first b. But the true
reading is probably lii?iabn in the singular, as in ver, 3,
3, And I have stained — ] For inbxax, a verb of very
irregular formation, compounded, as they say, of the two
forms of the preterite and future, a MS has inbxax, the re
gular future With a pleonastic pronoun added to it, accord
ing to the Hebrew idiom : " And all my raiment, I have
stained it." The necessity of the verb's being in the past
time, seeras to have given occasion to the alteration made
in the end of the word. The conversive 1 at the beginning
of the sentence affects the verb, though not joined to it; of
which there are many examples : —
laniar Dim i3ipni
" And thou wilt hear me, (or hear thou me), from among
the horns of the unicorns." Psal, xxii, 22,
7, And mine indignation — ] For innni, nineteen MSS
(three ancient), and four editions, have inpisi, and my
righteousness; from chap, lix, 16, which, I suppose, the
transcriber retained in his memory,
6. And I crushed them] For Diaii?xi, " and I made
thera drunken," twenty-seven MSS (three ancient), and

Chap. LXIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. .391
the old edition of 1488, have Diaii?xi, "and I crushed
them :" and so Syr, and Chald, The LXX have omitted
this whole line,
7, The remaining part of this chapter, with the whole
chapter following, contains a penitential confession and
suppUcation of the Israelites in their present state of dis
persion, in which they have so long marvellously subsisted,
and still continue to subsist, as a people ; cast out of their
country ; without any proper form of civil polity, or religi
ous worship; their temple destroyed, their city desolated
and lost to them ; and their whole nation scattered over the
face of the earth; apparently deserted and cast off by the
God of their fathers, as no longer his peculiar people.
They begin with acknowledging God's great raercies and
favours to their nation, and the ungi-ateful returns made
to thera on their part ; that by their disobedience they had
forfeited the protection of God, and had caused him to be
come their adversary. And now the Prophet represents
them, induced by the memory of the great things that God
had done for them, as addressing their humble supplication
for the renewal of his mercies : They beseech hira to regard
them in consideration of his former loving-kindness; they
acknowledge him for their Father and Creator ; they confess
their wickedness and hardness of heart; they entreat his
forgiveness; and deplore their present miserable condition
under which they have so long suffered. It seems designed
as a formulary of humiliation for the Israelites, in order to
their conversion.
The whole passage is in the elegiac form, pathetic and
elegant; but it has suffered much in our present copy by
the raistakes of transcribers.
Ibid, — the praise of Jehovah] For nibnn, plural,
twenty-nine MSS (three ancient), and two editions, have
nbnn, in the singular number : and so the Vulgate renders
it ; and one of the Greek versions, in the margin of Cod,
Marchal, and in the text of MSS Pachora, and i, D, ii,
Ti)» xMTiy xvpy.
8, 9, And he became their saviour in all their distress — ]
I have followed the translation of the LXX in the latter
part of the 8th and the former part of the 9th verse ; which
agrees with the present text, a little differendy divided, as
to the raembers of the sentence. They read ban, out of all,
instead of baa, in all, which makes no difference in the
sense; and is they understand as iia. Kxiiyiviro xvroi; n;

30-i NOTES ON ISAIAH. CHap. LXIII.
erarvi^ixy ix irxTvi; 9-Xi-^/ia; xvray y tt^it^v;, yei xyfiXo; — An angel
of his presence means an angel of superior order, in irarae
diate attendance upon God, So the angel of the Lord says
to Zacharias, " I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of
God ;" Luke i, 19. The presence of Jehovah, Exod.
xxxiii. 14, 15. and the.^ngel, Exod, xxiii. 20, 21. is Jeho-'
VAH hiraself: here, an angel of his presence is opposed to
Jehovah hiraself; as an angel is in the following passages
of the same book of Exodus. After their idolatrous worship
ping of the golden calfj " when God had said to Moses, I
will send an angel before thee — I will not go up in the midsi
of thee — the people mourned," Exod. xxxiii. 2 — 4. God
afterwards comforts Moses by saying, " My presence (that
is, I myself in person, and not by an angel) will go with
thee," ver. 14. xvlo; Tr^om^iao-oft-xi trov, as the LXX render it.
The MSS and editions are much divided between the
two readings of the text and margin in the common copies,
xb and lb. AU the ancient versions express the chetib xb.
Ibid. And he took them up, and he bare them] See the
note on chap. xlvi. 3.
10. And he fought against them] Twenty-six MSS (ten
ancient), and the first edition, with another, add the con
junction 1, xini.
11. How he brought them up from the sea with the shep
herd of his flock ; How—] For nix, how, interrogative,
twice,- the Syriac version reads ^ix, how, without interro
gation ; as that particle is used in the Syriac language, and
sometiraes in the Hebrew, See Ruth iii. 18, Eccles. ii. 16.
Ibid. Moses his servant—] For inr, his people, two
MSS (one of them ancient), and the old edition of 1488,
and Syr. read liar, his servant. These two words have
been mistaken one for the other in other places : Psal.
Ixxvin. 71. and lxxx. 5. for inr and inr, the LXX read
liar and "^lar.
Ibid, — the shepherd of his flock] That is, Moses. The.
MSS and editions vary in this word : some have it nri in
the singular nuraber; so LXX, Syr. Chald.; others iri,
plural. 14. The spirit of Jehovah conducted them] For I3ni3n,
caused him to rest, the LXX have altiynny xu\y;, conducted
them. They read Dn3n : Syr. Chald. Vulg. read I3n3n,
conducted him. Two MSS have the word without the i in
the middle.
15. — and thy mighty poxver] For Tiniiaa, plural, thirty-

Chap. LXIIL NOTES ON ISAIAH. S93
two MSS (seven ancient), and seven editions, have Tniiaa,
singular. Ibid. — are they restrained from us] For ibx, fro7n {or
in regard to) me, LXX and Syr. read M<hi<,from us.
16. O deliver us for the sake of thy name] The present
text reads, as our translation has rendered it, " Our Re
deemer, thy name is from everlasting." But instead of
Dbirn, from everlasting, an ancient MS has irnb, for the
sake of, which gives a much better sense. To shew the
impropriety of the present reading, it is sufficient to observe,
that the LXX and Syriac translators thought it necessary
to add I3ibr, upon us, to make out the sense; that is, " Thy
narae is upon us, or we are called by thy name, frora of old."
And the LXX have rendered labxa in the iraperative raood,
fvirxi iftx;.
18. It is little that they have taken possession of thy holy
mountain] The difficulty of the construction in this place
is acknowledged on all hands. Vitringa prefers that sense
as the least exceptionable, which our translation has ex
pressed : in which however there seems to me to be a great
defect ; that is, the want of what in the speaker's view must
have been the principal part of the proposition, the object
of the verb, the land, or it, as our translators supply it ;
which surely ought to have been expressed, and not to have
been left to be supplied by the reader. In a word, I believe,
there is some mistake in the text. And here the LXX help
us out : they had in their copy in, mountain, instead of Djr,
people; Tov ogov; tou ayiov <rov. " Not Only our enemies have
taken possession of Mount Sion, and trodden down thy
sanctuary ; even far worse than this has befallen us : Thou
hast long since utterly cast us off; and dost not consider us
as thy peculiar people,"
CHAPTER LXIV,
2. —the dry fuel — ] Dionn, " \t raeans dry stubble,
and the root is pnn," says Rabbi Jonah, apud Sal, ben
Melech in loc. Which is approved by Schultens, Orig,
Hebr, p, 30,
" The fire kindling the stubble does not seem like enough
to the melting of the mountains to be brought as a simile
to it. Quid si sic ?
That the mountains might flow down at thy presence !
As the fire of things smelted burneth,
As'the fire causeth the waters to boil^.

394 NOTES ON ISAIAH, Chap. LXIV.
There is no doubt of the Hebrew words of the second line
bearing that version :" Dk Jubb,
I submit these different interpretations to the reader's
judgment. For my own part, I am inclined to think that
the text is much corrupted in this place. The ancient ver
sions have not the least traces of either of the above inter
pretations. The LXX and Syr, agree exactly together in
¦ rendering this line by, " As the wax melteth before the
fire," which can by no means be reconciled with the present
text. Vulg, for DiDnn reads loni.
Ibid, That the nations — ] For Diia, the nations, four
MSS (one of them ancient) have Dim, the mountains.
4, For never have men heard — ] St Paul is generaUy
supposed to have quoted this passage of Isaiah, 1 Cor, ii, 9, ;
and Clemens Romanus, in his first epistle, has made the
same quotation, very nearly in the same words with the
apostle. But, the citation is so very different both from the
Hebrew text and the version of LXX, that it seems very
difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile them by any literal
emendation, without going beyond the bounds of temperate
criticism. One clause, " neither hath it entered into the
heart of man," (wliich, by the way, is a phrase purely He
brew, ab br nbr, and should seem to belong to the Pro
phet), is wholly left out ; and another is repeated without
force or propriety, viz, " nor perceived by the ear," after
" never have heard :" and the sense and expression of the
apostle is far preferable to that of the Hebrew text. Under
these difficulties, I am at a loss what to do better than to
offer to the reader this, perhaps disagreeable, alternative:
Either to consider the Hebrew text and LXX in this place
as wilfully disguised and corrupted by the Jews ; of which
practice, in regard to other quotations in the New Testa
ment from the Old, they lie under strong suspicions ; (see
Dr Owen on the Version of the Seventy, sect, vi— ix,) ; or
to look upon St Paul's quotation as not raade from Isaiah,
but from one or other of the two apocryphal books en
titled, The Ascension of Esaiah, and The Apocalyps of
Elias, in both of which this passage was found; and the
apostle is by some supposed in other places to have quoted
such apocryphal writings. As the first of these conclusions
will perhaps not easily be admitted by many; so I must
fairly warn ray readers, that the second is treated by Jerom
as litde better than heresy. See his comraent on this place
of Isaiah.

Chap. LXIV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 39.5
The variations on this place are as follows : for irnii?, they
have heard, a MS and LXX read larnu?, we have heard :
for the second xb, sixty-nine MSS and four editions have
xbi; and Syr, Chald, Vulg,; and so pri, LXX, Syr, nx
IS added before Dinbx in MS Bodl, lannb, plural, two
MSS, and all the ancient versions,
5, Thou meetest with joy those — ] Syr, reads — nnx rais
iu?ra ii?u?.
Ibid, Because of our deeds, for we have been rebellious.]
rwi31 Dbir Dna, I am fully persuaded, that these words,
as they stand in the present Hebrew text, are utterly unin
telligible : there is no doubt of the meaning of each word
separately, but put together they make no sense at all, I
conclude, therefore, that the copy has suffered by mistakes
of transcribers in this place. The corruption is of long
standing; for the ancient interpreters were as much at a
loss for the meaning as the moderns, and give nothing satis
factory. The LXX render these words by '^ix tsto mXxyrM-
fiiy. they seem to have read rii?33 Dnibr, without helping
the sense. In this difficulty, what reraains but to have re
course to conjecture ? Archbishop Secker was dissatisfied
\ri th the present reading: he proposes, ru?i3l I3ibr taan;
" look upon us, and we shall, or that we may, be saved ;"
which gives a very good sense, but seeras to have no suffi
cient foundation. Besides, the word ril?i3i, which is attend
ed with great difficulties, seems to be corrupted, as well as
the two preceding ; and the true reading- of it is, I think,
given by the LXX, rii?53i, i-7rXxyf,iY,fiiy, (so they render the
verb ril?S, chap, xlvi, 8, and Ezek, xxxiu, 12), parallel to
XDn3l, Yi^xnoftiy. For Dbir Dna, which mean nothing, I
would propose I3ibbrnn ; which I presume was first alter
ed to Dnibbrna, an easy and coramon raistake of the third
person plural of the pronoun for the first, (see note on chap,
xxxiii, 2,), and then with some further alteration to Dna
Dbir, The Dnibr, which the LXX probably found in
their copy, seeras to be a reranant of Dnibbrna.
This, it may be said, is imposing your sense upon the
Prophet. It may be so ; for perhaps these may not be the
very words of the Prophet : but however it is better than to
impose upon him what makes no sense at all ; as they gene
rally do who pretend to render such corrupted passages.
For instance, our own translators : " In those is continu
ance, and we shall be saved :" In those — in whom, -or what?
There is no antecedent to the relative. In the ways of God,

396 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LXIV.
say some ; with our fathers, says Vitringa, joining it in con
struction with the verb nsap, thou hast been angry with
them, our fathers ; and putting XDn3i, for we have sinned,
in a parenthesis. But there has not been any mention of
our fathers ; and the whole sentence, thus disposed, is
utterly discordant from the Hebrew idiom and construction.
In those is continuance: Dbir means a destined, but hidden
and unknown, portion of time ; but cannot mean continua
tion of tirae, or continuance, as it is here rendered. Such
forced interpretations are equally conjectural vrith the
boldest critical eraendation ; and generaUy have this further
disadvantage, that they are altogether unworthy of the
sacred writers.
6. There is no one — ] Twelve MSS have px, without
the conjunction i prefixed : and so read Chald. and Vulg,
Ibid. And hast delivered us up — ] For I3ainni, hast dis
solved us, LXX, Syr. Chald, had in their copies laaann,
hast delivered us up : Houbigant; Secker.
7. But Thou, O Jehovah, Thou — ] For nnri, and
710W, five MSS (one of them ancient), and the two oldest
editions of 1486 and 1488, have nnxi, and thou ; and so
Chald. seems to have read. The repetition has great force.
The other word may be well spared.
Ibid. We are all of us the work of thy ha7ids.] Three
MSS (two of them ancient), and LXX, read nii?rn, with-,
out the conjunction i prefixed. And for "jii, the Bodl. and
two other MSS, LXX, Syr. Vulg. read ^1^1, in the pluraj
nuraber,
CHAPTER LXV.
This chapter contains a defence of God's proceedings in
regard to the Jews, with reference to their complaint in the
chapter preceding. God is introduced declaring, that he
had called the GentUes, though they had not sought hira ;
and had rejected his own people, for their refusal to attend
to his repeated call ; for their obstinate disobedience, their
idolatrous practices, and detestable hypocrisy. That neverr
theless he would not destroy them all ; but would preserve
a remnant, to whom he would mak-e good his ancient pro
mises. Severe punishments are threatened to the apostates ;
and great rewards are promised to the obedient in a future
flourishing state of the church.
L I am made known to those that asked not for Jne] inil?n3,

Chap. LXV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 397
i/iipxyy,; lyiyofoiy, LXX, Alex. and St Paul, Rora. x. 20. ; who
has however inverted the order of the phrases, i/i(pxy7,; lyiyofny,
and Et-gE^ni', from that which they have in LXX. inii?n3
means, " quasitus sum cum eff'ectu — I am sought, so as to
be found :" Vitring. If this be the true meaning of the
word, then ibxii?, that asked, which foUows, should seem to
be defective, the.verb wanting its object : but two MSS (one
of thera ancient) have i3ibxii?, asked me ,- and another MS
lb ibxu?, asked ybr me ; one or other of which seeras to be
right. But Cocceius in Lex. and Vitringa in his translation,
render in wna by " I have answered;" and so the word is
rendered by all the ancient versions in Ezek, xx, 3, 31, If
this be right, the translation will be, "I have answered those
that asked not," I leave this to the reader's judgment ; but
have foUowed in ray translation the LXX, and St Paul, and
the MSS above raentioned, i3ii?pa is written regularly and
fully in above a hundred MSS, and in the oldest edition,
»aiii?pa, 3, 4, Sacrificing in the gardens, and — ] These are in
stances of heathenish superstition, and idolatrous practices,
to which the Jews were iramoderately addicted before the
Babylonish captivity. The heathen worshipped their idols
in groves; whereas God, in opposition to this species of
idolatry, coraraanded his people, when they should corae
into the proraised land, to destroy all the places wherein the
Canaanites had served their gods, and in particular to burn
their groves with fire ; Deut. xu, 2, 3, These apostate Jews
sacrificed upon altars built of bricks, in opposition -to the
command of God in regard to his altar, which was to be of
unhewn stone ; Exod, xx, 25, " — et pro uno altari, quod
impolitis lapidibus Dei erat lege constructura, coctos la-
teres et agrorum cespites hostiarum sanguine cruentabant :"
Hieron, in loc. Or it means, perhaps, that they sacrificed
upon the roofs of their houses, which were always flat, and
paved with brick, or tile, or plaster of terrace. An instance
of this idolatrous practice we find in 2 Kings xxiu, 12, where
it is said, that Josiah " beat down the altars that were on
the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of
Judah had made," See also Zeph, i, 5, Sir John Chardin's
MS note on this place of Isaiah is as follows : " Ainsi font
tous les Gentiles, sur les lieux eleves, et sur les terrasses,
appeUez lateres, parceque sont faits de briq," — " Who dwell
in the sepulchres, and lodge in the caverns," for the pur
poses of necromancy and divination ; to obtain dreams and

398 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LXV.
revelations. Another instance of heathenish superstition : —
" Hue dona sacerdos
Cum tulit, et caesarum ovium sub nocte silenti
Pellibus incubuit stratis, somnosque petivit ;
Multa modis simulacra vide't volitantia miris,
Et varias audit voces, fruiturque deorum
Colloquio, atque imis Acheronta aifatur Avernis." Virg, Mn. vii, 86,
" Here in distress the Italian nations come.
Anxious to clear their doubts, and learn their doom :
First, on the fleeces of the slaughter'd sheep.
By night the sacred priest dissolves in sleep ;
When, in a train, before his slumbering eye.
Thin airy forms and wondrous visions fly:
He calls the Powers who guard the infernal floods.
And talks, inspired, familiar with the gods." Pitt.
— " Who eat swine's flesh" which was expressly forbidden
by the law. Lev. xi. 7.; but among the heathen was in
principal request in their sacrifices and feasts, Antiochus
Epiphanes compelled the Jews to eat swine's flesh, as a full
proof of their renouncing their religion, 2 Mace, vi. 18. and
vii. 1. — " And the broth of abominable meats," for lustra
tions, magical arts, and other superstitious and abominable
practices. Ibid, — in the caverns.]- Dill a a a, a word of doubtful sig
nification. An ancient MS has Diilifa, another Diisa, in
the rocks ,- and Le Clerc thinks the LXX had it so in their
copy. They render it by ly roi; a-^>iXxioi;.
Ibid, — in their vessels.] For Dniba, a MS had at first
D nibaa : so Vulg, and Chald,; and the preposition seeras
necessary to the sense,
5. —for I am holier than thou] So the Chaldee renders
it, iinwip is the sarae with ^nn imi?ip. In the sarae
manner lanpm, Jer, xx. 7. is used for i3nn nprn, thou art
stronger than I.
7. — into their bosom] For br, ten MSS and five edi
tions have bx. So again, at the end of this verse, seventeen
MSS and four editions have bx,
6, 7, — their iniquities, and the i7iiqdities of their fathers]
For the pronoun affixed of the second person Da, your, twice,
read Dn, their, in the third person; with LXX, and Hou
bigant, 8, —for the sake of my servants] It is to be observed,
that one of the Koningsberg MSS collated by LUienthal
points the word il^r, singular; that is, my servant, meaning

Chap. LXV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 399
the Messiah ; and so read the LXX ; which gives a very
good sense,
9, — inheritor of my mountain] nn, in the singular
number; so LXX and Syr,; that is, of Mount Sion, See
ver, 11, and chap, Ivi, 7,; to which Sion, the pronoun fe
minine singular, added to the verb in the next line, refers ;
nill?li, shall inherit her.
10, — Sharon, and the valley of Achor — ] Two of the
most fertUe parts of Judea, faraous for their rich pastures :
the forraer to the west, not far from Joppa ; the latter north
of Jericho, near Gilgal,
11, Who set in order a table for Gad — ] The disquisi
tions and conjectures of the learned concerning Gad and
Meni are infinite and uncertain : perhaps the most probable
may be, that Gad means good fortune, and Meni the moon,
" But why should we be solicitous about it?" says Schmi-
dius, " It appears sufficiendy, from the circumstances, that
they were false gods, either stars or some other natural ob
ject, or a mere fiction. The Holy Scriptures did not deign
to explain more clearly what these objects of idolatrous wor
ship were ; but chose rather that the memory of the know
ledge of them should be utterly abolished. And God be
praised that they are so totally abolished, that we are now
quite at a loss to know what and what sort of things they
were :" Schmidius on the place, and on Judg, ii, 13, Bibl,
HaUensia, Jerom, on the place, gives an account of this idolatrous
practice of the apostate Jews, of making a feast, or a lecti-
sterniura, as the Roraans caUed it, for these pretended deities.
" Est in cunctis urbibus, et maxime in j9Egypto, et in Alex
andria, idololatriae vetus consuetudo, ut ultimo die anni, et
mensis ejus qui extremus est, ponant mensam refertam varii
generis epulis, et poculum mulso mixtum ; vel praeteriti anni
vel futuri fertUitatem auspicantes. Hoc autem faciebant et
Israelitae, omnium simulacrorum portenta venerantes; et
nequaquam altari victimas, sed hujusmodi raensai liba fun-
debant." See also Le Clerc on the place; and on Ixvi. 17.
and Dav. MiUii Dissert, v.
The aUusion to Meni, which signifies numbe7; is obvious.
If there had been the like allusion to Gad, which raight
have been expected, it might perhaps have helped to let us
into the meaning of that word. It appears from Jerom's
version of this place, that the w-ords ra ^xifootia, (or ^xifiovi, as
some copies have it), and t-^ tu;%;;i stood in his tirae in the

400 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LXV.
Greek version in an inverted order frora that which they
have in the present copies; the latter then answering to 13,
the forraer to «3n : by which some difficulty would be avoid
ed ; for it is commonly supposed that ia signifies rvj^n. See
Gen. xxx. 1 L apud LXX. This matter is so far well cleared
up by MSS Pachom. and i. D. ii. ; which agree in placing
these two words in that order which Jerom's version sup
poses. 15. — shall slay you.] For ininni, shall slay thee, LXX
and Chald. read Daninni, shall slay you, plural.
17. — I create new heavens, and a new earth] Concern
ing this image and the application of it, see De S. Poes.
Hebr. Prsel. ix.
18. — in the age to come, which I create] So in chap.
ix. 5. ir laX, TTxr-A^ TOU ftsAAovTo; xiayo;, LXX. See Bishop
Chandler, Defence of Christianity, p. 136,
20, For Di2?n, thence, LXX, Syr, Vulg, read Dil?, the7-e.
21, They shall not build, and another inhabit] The re
verse of the curse denounced on the disobedient, Deut, xxviii,
30, " Thou shalt build a house, and thou shalt not dwell
therein ; thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather
the grapes thereof,"
22, For as the days of a tree—] It is coramonly sup
posed, that the oak, one of the raost long-lived of the trees,
lasts about a thousand years; being five hundred years
growing to full perfection, and as many decaying ; which
seems to be a moderate and probable computation : See
Evelyn, Sylva, B, iii, ch, 3, The present Emperor of
China, in his very ingenious and sensible poem, entituled,
Eloge de Moukden, a translation of which in French was
published at Paris, 1770, speaks of a tree in his country
which lives more than a hundred ages; and of another,
which after fourscore ages is only in its prime, p, 37, 38,
But his imperial majesty's comraentators, in their note on
the place, carry the raatter rauch further; and quote au
thority which affirras, that the tree last mentioned by the
Emperor, the immortal tree, after haring lived ten thousand
years, is still only in its prime, I suspect that the Chinese
enlarge somewhat in their national chronology, as well as in
that of their trees : See Chou King, Preface, by Mons, De
Guignes, The Prophet's idea seems to be, that -they shall
live to the age of the antediluvians ; which seems to be very
justly expressed by the days of a tree, according to our no
tions.

Chap. LXV. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 401
23. My chosen shall not labour in vain] I remove iima
from the end of the 22d to the beginning of the 23d verse,
on the authority of LXX, Syr. Vulg. and a MS; contrary
to the division in the Masoretic text.
Ibid. Neither shall they generate a short-lived race]
nbnab, in festinationem, what shaU soon hasten away.
Eis x«T«g«v, for a curse, LXX. They seera to have read
nbxb; Grotius. But Psal. Ixxviii. 33. both justifies and
explains the word here. Dnini bana bail
:nbnaa Dni3ii?i
" And he consumed their days in vanity ;
And their years in haste."
MsT« o-srouSo;, say the LXX. Jerom on this place of Isaiah
explains it to the same purpose : " u; xyvnx^ixy, hoc est, ut
esse desistant,"
25. —shall feed together-] For inxa, as one, an ancient
MS has nni, together ; the usual word, to the same sense,
but very different in the letters. LXX, Syr. and Vulg. seera
to agree with the MS.

"O*

CHAPTER LXVL
This chapter is a continuation of the subject of the fore
going. The Jews valued themselves rauch upon their tem
ple, and the pompous system of services performed in it,
which they supposed were to be of perpetual duration ; and
they assumed great confidence and raerit to theraselves for
their strict observance of all the externals of their reUgion.
And at the very tirae when the judgraents, denounced in
Ver, fith and 12t"h of the preceding chapter, were hanging
over their heads, they were rebuilding, by Herod's raunifi-
cence, the temple in a most magnificent manner. God ad
monishes them, that the Most High dwelleth not, in temples
made with hands ; and that a raere external worship, how
dUigently soever attended, when accorapanied with wicked
and idolatrous practices in the worshippers, would never be
accepted by him. This their hypocrisy is set forth in strong
colours; which brings the Prophet again to the subject of
the former chapter ; and he pursues it in a different manner,
with more express declaration of the new economy, and of
the flourishing state of the church under it. The increase
of the church is to be sudden and astonishing. They that

4.0-2 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LXVI.
escape of the Jews, that is, that become converts to the
Christian faith, are to be employed in the divine raission to
the Gentiles, and are to act as priests in presenting the Gen
tiles as an offering- to God: see Rora. xv. 16.: And both,
now collected into one body, shall be witnesses of the final
perdition of the obstinate and irreclaimable.
These two chapters manifestly relate to the calling of the
Gentiles, the estabUshraent of the Christian dispensation,
and the reprobation of the apostate Jews, and their destruc
tion executed by the Romans.
2. — all these things are mine] A word, absolutely ne
cessary to the sense, is here lost out of the text; ib, 7nine:
it is preserved by LXX, and Syr.
3. He that slayeth an ox, killeth a man ; — ] These are in^
stances of extreme wickedness joined vrith hypocrisy ; of the
most flagitious crimes, committed by those who at the same
time affected great strictness in the performance of all the ex
ternal services of religion. God, by the Prophet Ezekiel, up
braids the Jews with the same practices : " When they had
slain their children to their idols, then they came the same
day into ray sanctuary to profane it ;" chap, xxiii. 39. Of
the same kind was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in our Sa
viour's time ; " who devoured widows' houses, and for a pre
tence made long prayers ;" Matt, xxiii, 14,
The generality of interpreters, by departing from the
literal rendering of the text, have totaUy lost the true sense
of it, and have substituted in its place what makes no good
sense at all ; for it is not easy to shew, how in any circum
stances sacrifice and murder, the presenting of legal offerings
and idolatrous worship, can possibly be of the same account
in the sight of God,
Ibid, — that maketh an oblation, [offerethT] swine's blood]
A word here likewise, neces.sary to complete the sense, is
perhaps irrecoverably lost out of the text. The Vulg, and
Chald, add the word offereth, to make out the sense ; not,
as I imagine, from any different reading, (for the word
wanted .seems to have been lost before the time of the oldest
of thera, as the LXX had it not in their copy), but from
raere necessity,
Le Clerc thinks, that nbrn is to be repeated from the
beginning of this raeraber ; but that is not the case in the
parallel merabers, which have another and a different verb
in the second place, " di, sic versiones: putarera taraen
legendura participium aliquod, et quidem nat, cum sequatur

Chap. LXVI. NOTES ON ISAIAH. 403
n, nisi jam prascesserat :" Secker, Houbigant supplies bax,
eateth. After aU, I think the most probable word is that
which Chald, and Vulg, seem to have designed to represent ;
that is, aiipn,
5, Say ye to your brethi-en — ] The Syr. reads nnx
Dainxb ; and so the LXX, edit, Comp. imxn x\x<poi; v^ay •,
and MS Marchal, has x^xqioi;; and so Cyril and Proco
pius read and explain it. It is not easy to raake sense of the
reading of LXX in the other editions : u-irxn a^iX(poi tifiay roi;
fiio-ovo-iy ifcx;  but for i^ay, MS I. D. II. alsO has Vfcay.
8. —and who hath seen] Twenty MSS (four ancient),
and the two oldest editions, with two others, have ini, adding
the conjunction i : and so read all the ancient versions.
11. —from her abundant stores] For' mn, two MSS,
and the old edition of 1488, have inn ; and the latter t
is upon a rasure in three other MSS. It is reraarkable, that
Kirachi and Sal. ben Melee, not being able to make- any
thing of the word as it stands in the text, says it means the
sarae with inn : that is, in effect, they adrait of a various
reading, or an error, in the text. But, as Vitringa observes,
what sense is there in sucking nourishment from the splen
dour of her glory ? He therefore endeavours to deduce ano
ther sense frora the word m ; but, as far as it appears to me,
without any authority, I am more incUned to accede to the
opinion of those learned Rabbins, and to think that there is
some mistake in the word ; for that in truth is their opinion,
though they disguise it by saying, that the corrupted word
means the very same with that which they believe to be
genuine. So in chap, xli, 24-, they say, that r2x, a viper,
means the same with DSX, nothing ,- instead of acknowledg
ing that one is written by mistake instead of the other. I
would propose to read in this place pfn, or pn, (instead of
inn), y?-om the stores; from pr, to nourish, to feed: see
Gen. xlv, 23, 2 Chron, xi, 23, Psal, cxliv, 13, And this
perhaps raay be meant by Aquila, who renders the word by
a-xo irxyro^x-mx; : with which that of die Vulgate, " ab omni-
moda gloria," and of Symraachus and Theodotion, nearly
agree. The Chaldee follows a different reading, without
improving the sense; ]»i2,from the wine.
12, — like the great river, and like the overflowing stream — ]
That is, the Euphrates, (it ought to have been pointed
insa, utfluvius ille, as The River), and the NUe,
' Ibid, And ye shall suck at the breast] These two words
111? br, at the breast, seera to have been oraitted in the pre-

404. - NOTES ON ISAIAH. CKap. LXVL
sent text, from their likeness to the two words following;
IS br, at the side. A very probable conjecture of Houbi
gant, Chald, and Vulg, have omitted the two latter words
instead of the tw6 former. See note on ehap, lx, 4,
15, — shall come as afire] For ii?xa, in fire, the LXX
had in their copy ii?xa, as a fire; a; ttv^.
Ibid, To breathe forth his anger] Instead of aiii?rjb, as
pointed by -the Masoretes, to render, I understand it as
aiii?nb, to breathe, frora an?3,
17, after the rites of Achad — ] The Syrians worshipped
a god called Adad: Plin, Nat, Hist, Xxxvii, 11, Macrob,
Sat, i, 23, They held hira to be the highest and greatest of
the gods, and to _ be the same vrith Jupiter and the Sun :
and the narae Adad, says Macrobius, signifies One ; as like
wise does the word Achad in Isaiah, Many learned raen
therefore have supposed, and with sorae probability, that the
Prophet raeans the same pretended deity, inx, in the
Syrian and Chaldean dialects is in ; and perhaps by redu-
pUcation of the last letter, to express perfect unity, it may
have become nn, not improperly expressed in Latin by
Macrobius Adad, without the aspirate. It was also pro
nounced by the Syrians theraselves, with a weaker aspirate,
lin; as in Benhadad, Hadadezer, naraes of their kings,
which were certainly taken from their chief object of worship.
This seems to me to be a probable account of this narae.
But the Masoretes correct the text in this place : their
raarginal reading is nnx, which is the sarae word, only in
the ferainine forra; and so read thirty MSS (six ancient)
and the two oldest editions. This Le Clerc approves, and
supposes it to mean Hecate, or the Moon ; and he supports
his hypothesis by arguments not at all iraprobable. See his
note on the place.
Whatever the particular mode of idolatry which the Pro
phet refers to might be, the general sense of the place is
perfectly clear. But Chald, and Syr, and after them Sym
raachus and Theodotion, cut off at once all these difficulties,
by taking the word mx in its coramon meaning, not as a
proper name ; the two latter rendering the sentence thus :
oTTura xXXnXay ey ftia-a itriioyray to x^ix; to ^oi^iioy, one after another,
in the midst of those that eat swine's flesh. I suppose, they
all read in their copies inx inx, one by one, or perhaps
mx mx mx, one after a7iother. See a large Dissertation
on this subject in Davidis MUlii Dissertationes Selectse,
Dissert, vi.

Chap. LXVL NOTES ON ISAlAH. 405
18, For I know their deeds — ] A word is here lost out of
the present text, leaving the sense quite imperfect. The word
is ms knowing, supplied from the Syriac, The Chald, had
the same word in the copy before hira, which he paraphrases
by iba imp, their deeds are manifest before me: and the Al
dine and Complutensian editions of LXX acknowledge the
sarae word, smr«fs«i ; which is verified by MS Pachom, and
the Arabic version, I think there can be little doubt of its
being genuine.
Ibid, And I come — ] For nxa, which will not accord
with any thing in the sentence, I read xa, with a MS;
the participle answering to riv ; with which agree LXX,
Syr. Vulg. Perhaps it ought to be xai, Syr. quando ve-
niara : and so LXX, according to edit. Aid. and Coraplut,
and Cod. Marchal.
19. — who draw the bow] I much suspect, that the words
mi?p iawn, who draw the bow, are a corruption of the word
Tirn, Moschi, the name of a nation situated between the
Euxine and Caspian Seas; and properly joined with ban,
the Tibareni: see Bochart, Phaleg. iii. 12. The LXX
have |M05-ox, -without any thing of the drawers of the bow: the
word being once taken for a participle, the bow was added
to make sense of it. mi?p, the bow, is omitted in a MS.
Ibid. — who never heard my name] For irnil?, my fame,
I read with LXX and Syr. inn?, my name.
20. — and in counes] There is a sort of vehicle, much
used in the East, consisting of a pair of hampers, or cradles,
thrown across a carael's back, one on each side ; in each of
which a person is carried. They have a covering to defend
them frora the rain and the sun. Thevenot calls them
Counes, i. p. 356. MaUlet describes them as covered cages
hanging on both sides of a carael. " At Aleppo," says Dr
Russell, " woraen of inferior condition, in longer journies,
are coraraonly stowed, one on each side of a mule, in a sort
of covered cradles :" Nat. Hist, of Aleppo, p. 89. These
seem to be what the Prophet raeans by the word D'as : See
Harraer, Observ. i. p. 445.
21, — and for Levites] For Diibb, fifty-nine MSS (eight
ancient) have Diibbi, adding the conjunction i, as the sense
seems necessarily to require; and so read all the ancient
versions. See Josh, iii, 3. and the various readings on that
place in Kennicott's Bible,
24, For their worm shall not die — ] These words of the
Prophet are applied by our blessed Saviour, Mark ix, 44.

406 NOTES ON ISAIAH. Chap. LXVI,
to express the everlasting punishment of the wicked in Ge
henna, or in Hell, Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom,
was very near to Jerusalem, to the south-east : it was the
place where die idolatrous Jews celebrated that horrible rite
of making their chUdren pass through the fire — -that is, of
burning them in sacrifice — to Moloch, To put a stop to
this abominable practice, Josiah defiled, or desecrated, the
place, by fiUing it with human bones; 2 Kings xxiii, 10.
14. ; and probably it was the custom afterwards to throw out
the carcasses of animals there; and it "became the common
burying-place for the poorer people of Jerusalem. Our
Saviour expressed the state of the blessed by sensible images ;
such as Paradise, Abraham's bosom, or, which is the same
thing, a place to recline next to Abraham at table in the king
dom of heaven: see Matt. viii. 11. (" Caenabat Nerva cum
paucis. Veiento p7-oximus, atque etiam in sinu recurabebat ;"
PUn. Epist. iv. 22. : corapare John xiii. 23.) ; for we could
not possibly have any conception of it, but by analogy from
worldly objects. In like manner, he expressed the place of
torment under the image of Gehenna ; and the punishment
of the wicked, by the worm which there preyed on the car
casses, and the fire which consumed the wretched victims : —
marking however, in the strongest manner, the difference
between Gehenna and the invisible place of torment; namely,
that in the former the suffering is transient — the worm it
self, that preys on the body, dies ; and the fire, which totally
consumes it, is soon extinguished ; — whereas in the figurative
Gehenna the instruments of punishment shall be everlasting,
and the suffering without end ; for there " the worm dieth
not, and the fire is not quenched."
These emblematical images, expressing heaven and hell,
were in use among the Jews before our Saviour's time; and
in using them he complied with their notions. " Blessed is
he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God," says the
Jew to our Saviour, Luke xiv. 15. And in regard to Ge
henna, the Chaldee paraphrast, as I observed before on
chap. xxx. 33. renders everlasting, or continual, burnings,
by " the Gehenna of everlasting fire." And before his time
the Son of Sirach, vii. 17. had said, " the vengeance of the
ungodly is fire and worms." So likewise the author of the
book of Judith : " Wo to the nations rising up against my
kindred : the Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them
in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms in their
flesh," chap. xvi. 17.; manifestly referring to the same
erablera.

INDEX OF TEXTS
OCCASIONALLY ILLUSTRATED.

The small Numeral Letters refer to the Pages of the Dissertation ; the
Figures, to the Pages of the Notes.

Genesis.

ii. 10.
xiii. 10.
xxiv. 47.
xxvi. 20.
xxx. II.
xxxi. 34.
 42. 53.
xxxiii. 13.
xl. 11.
xiii. 6.
xlix. 11.

Exodus.

145
145 163
307
400 152 198
318 172
351 172

184
204 184
201 342271 289 342 169
271 213 190
169, 170
xli, 183, 317 158
397352 167
392 179
257 324

xxviii. 40.
xxix. 6.
 42,43.
xxxiii. 2 — 4. 14.
14, 15.

xxxviii. 8.
xl. 34—38.
— 38.

LEvrricus.

IV.vi. 12, 13.
ix. 24.
xi. 7.
xiii. 45.
xiv. 42.
xix. 23—23.
xxi. 18.
xxii. 23.
xxiii. 36.
xxv. 9, &c.
xxvi. 8.

Numbers.

vi. 4.
xi. 5.
— 12.
xii. 14.
xiii. 22, 23.
xiv. 34.
xvi. 41, 42.
xxi. 17, 18.
xxii. 4.
xxiii. 7 — 10.
 21, 22.

Page 386
386224392
392 195 158 169

138184 184
398364 184
388 177
177 139
384 285

174
137, 240
341 353 171
244 138
xxxv 178
224 310

408

INDEX OF TEXTS.

xxiv. 6.
xxix. 35.

Deuteronomy.

iii. 3.
V. 6.
A. 24.
xi. 6.
XV. 2. 5.
xviii. 19.
xix. 29.
xxii. 14.

i. 7.
vi. 2.
xi. 31.
— .34.
xvi. 3, 4.
XX. 38. 40.

Joshua.

Judges.

Page

356

Ruth.

139

ii. 14.
iii. 18.

340
1 Samuel
179
ii. 27.
171
iii. 21.
285
ix. 7.
283
— 15.
397
— 25.
388
xiii. 6.
139
xiv. 4, 5.
284
XV. 27.
151
xvii. 52.
225
xviii. 6, 7.
282
xix. 13.
250
xxiv.
249
352
2 Samuel
279
vi. 14. 16.
282
X. 4, 5.
333
xi. 23.
.374
xiv. 2.
400
XV. 30.
133
xxii. 41.
132
xxiv. 7.
xxxv, xxxix
132
1 Kings.
368
iv. 22, 23.
329
vii. 2, 3.
xxxix
X. 16, 17. 21.
259
- 26—29.
285
-27.
175
xviii. 26.
329
 38.
258
XX. 11.
.344
xxii. 48.
 49.
405
2 Kings.
190
iv. 1.
337
— 39—41.
202
v. 23.
214
ix. 30.
214
XV. 3, 4. 34
, 35.
258
— 29.
157
— 37.
xvi. 9.
xvii. 6.
357
 6. 24.
156
xviii, xix, xx.
323
xviii. 8.
317
 14—16.
171
 17.
285
 18.
Page 190
392
252
232 374 176
250 156
210 157
275
xli, 317 152155
xli
193
275
384364 xii
258
158
251 257 151
204288 178 179154 154
332 174 196
160 132
196, 201
136, 186
196, 232, 251
251 260
302
226, 243 293
. 244 .302
INDEX OF TEXTS.

409

xviii. 20.
 22.

Page

1

Page

302 1 xxxiv. 6, 7
33.
187
302
xxxv. la
J87
 32.
302
 34.
302
Ezra.
xix. 9.
303
i. 2.
334
— 15.
303
iii. IL
xli, 183
— 17.
303
iv. 2.
las
— 19.
303
ix. 8.
23,6
— 20.
304
— 23.
304
Nehemiah.
— 25.
304
V. 17, 18.
158
— 35.
305
xii. 24.
xl;
XX. 4, 5.
306
— 6.
306
Esther.
— 7,8.
306
ii. 12.
163
-9. 11.
306
vi. 12. and
vii. 8,
254
— 12.
30.8
— 17.
309
Job.
— 20.
252
i. 1.
216
xxi. 13.
275
-17.
257
xxiii. 10.
14
406
-19.
246
 12.
.397
iii. 4. 6. 9,
xiii
 19.
20.
187
— 24.
307
xxiv. 14,
157
V. 23.
276
xxv. 4, 3,
-250
viii. 5, 6.
xiv
 12.
22.
185
ix. 8.
xii. 13—16.
368
xviii
1 Chronicles.
xiii. 19.
334
V. 26.
196, 201
xvii. .3.
354
ix. 33.
386
XX. 24.
220
xiii. 5.
258
xxi. 18.
320
xxviii. 2.
383
xxvi. 2, 3.
xxvi. 5.
207 xii
2 Chronicles,
xxvii — xxxi.
224
i. 13.
152
xxvii. 18.
137
vii. 1.
184
xxx. 7.
151
viu. 17, 18.
154
 10.
353
ix. 18.
358
 30.
199
— 21.
154
xxxiii. 18.
308
XX. 20.
189
xxxvii. 9.
246
— 36.
154
 11.
238
xxvi. 6, 7.
226
xxxviii. 6.
135
 22.
181
xli. 1.
354
xxix. 19.
240
xiii. 10.
313
xxxii. 2 —
5.
250
 2,3.
5.
30.
252
Psalms,
 10.
135
i. 3.
146
 23.
226, 239
-4.
145, 320
 25, 26.
30, 31.
309
ii. 7.
308
 27.
296
X. 1 ,
375
 30.
252
xviii. 35.
220
 32.
131
xix, 7—10.
xxiv
 33.
25.3, 368'
 U.
267
xxxiii. 11.
188
XX. 1.
293
 17.
152
— 7, 8.
xvi
4\0

INDEX OF TEXTS.

xxi. I, 2.
xxii. 2.
 22.
 29,
xxv. xxx. 5.
xxxi, 19, 20.
xxxii. 3.

Ixxxv. 10—14,
Ixxxvi. 14.
Ixxxvii. 6.
xcix. 5,
ci.
cii. 6,
ciii. 3.
 5.
 9. 13, 14.
 11.
 11, 12,

Page

Page

X

ciii. 16.

316

307

cv. 33.

172

390

cviii. 4, 5.

xxxviii

149

ex. 1.

358

iv, v

cxi.

iv, v

xvi, 370

— 4.

xxix

xxiv

cxii.

iv, v

307

 1.

X

iv, V

 10.

xiii

xl

cxiv. 1 — 4.

xxviii

320

 1, 2.

310

370

cxvi. 1. 9. 12. 14, 15.

xxi

V

cxvii. 2.

371

xiii

cxviii. 12.

179, 205

xvii

cxix.

iv, V

307

 57.

333

xxxii

CXX. 1. 6.

xxi

xxi

cxxvii. 4.

xxix

xxv

cxxxiv.

387

170

cxxxv. 6, 7.

xviii

202

cxxxvii. I.

167

132
203

1

229
382

cxxxix. 14.

360

cxliv. 5, 6.

xi

284

 12—14.

xxiv

210, 331

cxlv.

iv, v

310

cxlvi. 2, 3. 10,

xxix

317

cxlviii. 7— la

xvii

344

331

Proverbs.

338
i. 24—32.
X
xxxii
iii. 8.
136
168
— 9.
xi
338
vi. 16—19.
xix
373
— 20.
199
142
vii. 2.
199
237
— 22, 23.
162
401
X. 1. 7.
XV
343
xi. 22.
164
375
— 24.
XV
172
xvi. 3.3.
xvi
392
xviii. 10.
295
392
xxi. 1,
147
210, 331
xxiii, 30.
141
337
xxv, 26.
135
267
xxix. 26.
xvi
168
XXX.
xix
383
 3.
258
xXvi
xxxi. 10—31.
iv
265
295
ECCLESIASTBS.
319
ii. 3, 6.
1,47
375
— 8.
157
371
— 16.
392
XV
xi. 2,
xix
INDEX OF TEXTS.

411

i. 3.
ii. 13.
iv. 4.
— 10, 11.

Canticles.

Page

xxxvii. 9.

Page 327

xix

 22, &c.

xxvi

137

 25.

244

257

 26.

252

163
 29.
286
viii. 2.
141
xl. 2.
xli. 19.
xxi
347, 371
i. a
Isaiah.
— 24.
403
xiii
— 28.
xii
- 8.
iii. I.
173
xiii. 17.
xxiv, 338
157
xliii. 18, 19.
311
iv. 1.
157
xliv. 7.
210
V. 2.
175
 18.
18*
- 4.
175
 26.
xiv
- 22.
141
xlv. 1.
179
vi. 13.
264
— 8.
168
viii. 10.
xxxii
 16, 17.
xxiv
— 22.
181
xlvi. a
xi
ix. 10.
xvii, 204
— 7.
xiv
— 20.
xiii
xlvii. 5.
255-
X. 5—12.
343
xlviii. 20, 21.
311
— 32.
287
xlix. 4.
xiv
xiii. 4i 5.
xxiv
 20, 21.
369
: — 6.
175
1. 5, 6.
xix
 10.
xxi
- 10.
XV
xiv. 4—27.
xxvi
Ii. 7, 8,
xi
- 14.
368
- 17.
142
— 28.
181
- 19.
xix
XV. a
xix
- 20.
xiii
xvi. 10.
173
lu. 7, 8. 12.
3U
xvii. 9.
xxi
— 8.
317
— la
320
liii. 4.
149, 296
XX.
327
liv. 4.
X
xxii. 6.
220
— 4,5.
167
— 14.
175
— 10.
xvii
— 16.
367, 368
Iv. 2.
207
xxiv. 17.
175
— a
xi
xxvi. 5, 6.
xii
— 6,7.
x
xxvii. 7.
175
— la
347
xxviii, 14, 15
18.
xxx
Ivii. 6.
175
xxix. 5.
320
— la 14.
311
 21.
282
Iviii. 5—8.
xviii
xxx. 16.
XV
 14.
368
 26.
218
lx. 4.
351
 30— 3a
281
— 6—9.
338
xxxi. 8.
207
— 11.
331
 9.
. 279
lxi. a
175
xxxii. 11.
247
— 7.
313
xxxiii. I.
175
Ixv. 11, 12.
175
 12.
205
 21,22.
xi
 21.
xxi
Ixvi. 1.
358
xxxiv.
390
Jeremiah.
xxxv. I, 2.
371
i. 6.
184
xxxvi, xxxvii,
xxxviii, xxxix. 302
- 10.
184
xxxvi. 17.
260
ii. 18.
258
J. 1-2

INDEX OF TEXTS.

Page

Page

ii. 21.

174

iv. 2.

257
-25.
374
— 8.
199
-27.
133
— 15.
xxxvi, 361
iv. 30.
160
— 17.
307
vi. 1.
283
— 21.
246
vii. 22, 2a
329
— 24.
135
Ezekiel.
— 29.
228
i. 14.
247
viii. 7.
133
iii. 8, 9.
354
X. 3—5.
342
iv. 6.
244
- 9.
154
V. la
142
xii. 7. 9.
372
xiii. 9.
168
xvii. 8.
145, 146
 16.
223
— 12.
182
XV. 3.
255
xviii. 12.
374
— 3,4.
273
xix. 9.
206
xvi. 11, 12.
163
XX. 7.
398
xvii. 22 —
24,
ISO
xxiii. 31.
230
XX. 3. 31.
397
xxv. U.
261
— 28.
144
xxxiiL &.
382
^ 47.
205, 208
xxxvii. 13.
370
xxii. 18 —
22.
168
xl. 12.
185
xxiii. 30.
402
xli. 9.
136
 40.
160
xlviii.
227
xxiv. 17,
. 364
 3.
228
xxvi. 14.
262
 11.
268
 15-
.18.
261
 12.
237
xxvii. 12.
154
... — 29.
230
xxix. 3.
325
 31.
230
 18—20.
193
 32.
231
xxxii. 27.
217
 33.
232
xxxvii. 11
— la
271
 St.
228
xxxviii.
390
 36.
228, 230
xxxix. 4.
226
 37.
227, 228
 8:-
-10.
203
 43, 44.
263
 16,
17.
299
xlix. 35.
220
xliii. 3.
184
). 9.
218
 5, 6,
182
-38.
332
-— 7.
182
Ii. 27, 28.
218
-36.
332
vii. 17.
Daniel.
261
];,amentations.
1
viii. 20.
261
- 1, 2,
V
xxiii
Hosea.
ii.
V
i. 7.
305
-4.
xxv
ii. 6.
272
T-10.
166, 258
-18.
276
-15.
xxxvi
iv. la
144
iii.
iv, v
V. 7.
151
— 1— a
xxiii
vi. 4.
xii
— 14.
169
— 6.
329
— 31.
xxv
ix. 10.
274
— 39.
313
X. 8.
156
— 66.
169
xi. 4.
133
iv-
iv, V
— 9. -
207
INDEX OF TEXTS.

413

xii. 1.
xiii. 4.
xiv. 9.

i. 14.
ii. 2.
-7.- 10.
- 15.
- 20. 22.
-25. iii. 10.
— la
— 15, 16.
— 16.

i. 1.
-2.iv. 11.
— la
..10.
-19.-21—24.- 25, 26.
vi. 3—6.
— 12.
— la
viii. 9.

i. a
iii. 1— a
iv. I — 4.
— 8.
V. 2.
— a
vi. 1, 2.
— 15.
— 16.
vii. 4.

i. 11.
-15. ii. la
iii. 5, 6.
— 14.

Joel.

Amos.

Micah.

Nahum.

Habakkuk.

Zephaniah.

Page

332, 374

ii. 8—11.

206

iii. 17.

xiv
ii. 17.
Haggai.
139
199
Zechariah
xi
i. 15.
219
ii. 5.
139
viii. 2a
294
ix. 12.
179
— 14.
150
X. 4.
xiii, 173
xiii. 4.
219
xiv. 5.
xiv
 10.
 19.
178
Malachl
xiv
i. 1.
208
ii. 11.
368
— 12.
282
iii. 2, 3.
264
— 15.
139
iv. 1.
329
176
Tobit.
180
xiii. 16, 17.
207
219
iv. 7.
X. a
Judith.
368
xvi. 16.
159
 17.
149
292
Wisdom.
351"
ii. 7, 8.
192
xiii. 11—19
132
XV. 7.
xix
169
Eccl'us.
272
vii. 15.
— 17.
xiv. 24.
331
xxiv. 30, 31
.360
xlviii. 17.
202
162
Baruch.
322
,. 7.
177
397
1 Maccabees.
V. 65.
Page 230320
173
343 169 157
313246256 243 178 173
313
223
223
387 168
267267
370
210384318 406
274
332 332
278
406 256 147
252
314321 332
389
414

INDEX OF TEXTS.

Page

Page

2 Maccabees.

Acts.

vi. 18.

398
ii. a
178
vii. 1.
398
— 39.
X. 9.
376 250
Matthew.
xi. 28.
219
iii. 3.
314
xii. 8.
202
vi. 28—30.
273
xxi. 4.
262
viii. 11.
267, 406
xxvi. 4, 5.
366
 17.
296
xxviii. 26.
182
X. 27.
251
 27.
185
xi, 4, 5.
297
xii. 18.
323
Romans.
xiii. 14.
182, 185
i. 20.
327
XV. 9.
282
vi. 17.
213
xvi. 19.
255
ix. 20, 21.
337
 28.
390
— 28.
208
xviii. 25.
332
X. 15.
360
xxi. 33.
173
— 20.
397
— 4a
282
xi. 8.
182
xxiii. 14.
402
— 26.
380
xxiv. 28.
264
— 30,31.
282
 29.
219
XV. 4, 5.
138
.^  41.
342
— 12.
211
Mark.
— 12, la
138
i,a
214
ii. 9.
296
1 Corinthians.
vii. 7.
282
ii. 9.
394
ix. 44.
405
iii. 15.
208
xii. I.
173
Galatians.
xiv. 65.
354
iii. 3.
316
XV. 19.
354
— la
Efhesians.
225
Luke.
ii. la 17.
376
i, 19.
392
ii. I.
219
Hebrews.
iii. 4.
219
iv. 12.
348
iv. 18, 19.
384
xiii. 15.
376
X. 34.
1.36, 214
xiv. 15.
406
1 Peter.
 16.
267
i. 24.
315
XV. 22.
202
- 24, 23.
316
xviii. 1.
386
 31, 32.
334
Revelation.
xxi. 22.
390
i. 16.
348
xxii. 29, 30.
267
iii. 7.
iv. 7a
255 182
John.
V. 5.
213
i. 2a
214
vi. 15, 16.
156
vii. 37. 39.
215
xiv. 10.
142
xii. 40.
182, 185
xix. 13. 13,
16.
390
— 41.
182
 17, 18.
299
xiii. 2a
406
XX.
390
XV. 6.
273
— 4.
330
xviii. 20, 21.
363
xxi. 18—21
xxii. 16.
•
370
213
INDEX OF PERSONS,

Abarbanel, 362, 370.
Abendana, 135, 137.
Aben-Ezra, 129, 137, 163, 209, 346,
367.
Aben Tybbon, xxxv.
Abraham, 320.
Abydenus, 246, 334.
Addison, 167, 202, 235.
.ffischylus, 234, 356.
JEtius, 330.
Agatharchides, 338.
Ahaz, 130, 136.
Alexander, 240, 262.
Ambrose, 319.
Ammianus, 328.
Antiochus Epiph. liii.
Antipater, 342.
Aquila, xliii, Ivi, 134, 144, 177, 377.
Aratus, 254, 278.
Arbuthnot, 292.
Arias Montanus, 364, 388.
Aristophanes, 161, 348.
Aristotle, his Treatise on Poetry, xlviii.
 Hist. Animal. 228.
Arnobius, 373.
Arrian, 221, 328, 33a
Athenseus, 339.
Aurelius Victor, 358.
Azarias, Rab. xxxiii, &c.
Bagot, 208.
Balkis, Queen of Sheba, 148.
Barry, 268.
Baumgarten, 255.
Benjamin of Tudela, 2-22.
Berosus, 222, 312.
Beryte, I'Eveque de, 292.
Blanchini, 364.
Bochart, 140, 154, 171, 228, 235,
280, 294, 319, 338, 405.
Breithaupt, 350.
Brentius, 151.
Brerewood, 335.
Bruns, Ivii.
Bryant, 243.
Buxtorff, 325, 368.
Buxtorff, junior, xxxiii.

Caelius Antipater, 134.
Callimachus, 191, 234.
Calmet, 227.
Cambyses, 240.
Camden, 170.
CapeUus, 267, 323, 354.
Casaubon, 365.
Castell, 331, 366.
Castellio, xxviii, xlix.
Cellarius, 229.
Celsius, 144.
Celsus, 308.
Chandler, Bp. 199, 363, 400.
Chappelow, 142, 157, 308.
Chardin, 136, 158, 172, 173, 183,
204, 217, 251, ^53, 255, 261, 268,
284, 292, 318, 330, 342, 353, 358,
382, 386, 397.
Chrysostom, 176.
Cicero, iii, 339, 348.
Claudian, 304.
Cleraens Alexand. 161, 254, 373.
 Rom. 394.

Cocceius, 246, 288, 379, 397.
Columella, 171.
Cotovicus, 382.
Croesus, 334, 339.
Cuper, 363.
Curtius, 300, 351.
Cyril, 178, 40a
Cyrus, 214, 220, 246, 247, 320, 332,
33^, 334, 335, 336, 361.
Darius Hystaspis, 221.
D'Arvieux, 193, 27a
De Guignes, 400.
De Lisle, 171.
Demosthenes, iii, 332.
Deschamps, 200.
D'Herbelot, 205, 294, 351.
Dicaearchus, 260.
Diodorus, 236, 240, 253, 314, 339.
Doederlein, 284, 350.
Donatus, 261.
Drusius, 367.
Durell, Ivi, 143, 153, 166, 177, 189,
363, 373.

416

INDEX OF PERSONS.

Egmont and Heyman, 171, 236, 240.
Ephrsm Syr. 145, 247, 292.
Esarhaddon, 187.
Eudoxus, 154.
Evelyn, 400.
Eugene Roger, 162, 17 L
Euripides, 135, 290, 293.
Eusebius, 210, 334
Eustathius, 234.
Festus, 363.
Purer, 274.
Gibson, 170.
Glassius, 135.
Grabe, ii, Iv.
Gratius, 231.
Gregory Naz. 183.
Grotius, 241, 295, 312, 401.
Hadrian, 185.
Hammond, 286.
Hanno, 154.
Hare, viii, xxxii.
Harmer, 136, 137, 156, 138, 173,
174, 184, 190, 203, 255, 273, 279,
292, 304, 305, 318, 330, 342, 351,
35a 386, 405.
Hasselquist, 137, 172, 175.
Herman von der Hardt, ii.
Herodotus, 154, 172, 214, 220, 221,
226, 2-28, 236, 244, 247, 260, 328,
330, 33a 334, 353.
Hesiod, 290, 363.
Hesychius, 339.
Hezekiah, 130, 230, 251, 25-2, 293,
296, 302, 309.
Homer, 141, 180, 191, 223, 228, 238,
254, 280, 281, 287, 289, 342, 343,
357, 358, 367.
Horace, 212, 261, 280, 332, 382.
Houbigant, xxxi, 139, 131, 157, 175,
177, 192, 204, 211, 215, 233, 231,
26a 269, 274, 277, 284, 285, 286,
295, 300, 302, 306, 308, 309, 321,
325, 326, 329, 337, 370, 371, 379,
383, 384, 396, 398, 403, 404.
Huet, 154, 179, 254, 328.
Hunt, 162.
Hyde, 300, 336.
Jarchi, xxxi, 159, 181, 191, 229, 257,
276, 305, 307, 325, 34a 346, 348,
374.
Jephthah, his vow, 325.
Jerom, ii, Ivi, 173, 182, 204, 210,

221, 229, 244, 257, 269, 276, 278,
287, 303, 307, 320, 366, 377, 394,
397, 399, 400.
Ikenius, 242.
John the Baptist, 313—315.
John Hyrcanus, 389.
Jonathan Ben Uziel, Iv.
Jones, 213.
Josephus, 135, 210, 22-2.
Jotham, 129.
Isaiah, 129.
Jubb, 140, 151, 154, 159, 166, 187,
188, 355, 363, 368, 378, 379, 386,
394.
Judas Maccabeus, 389.
Julius Pollux, 161.
Justin, 258.
Juvenal, 160, 165, 197.
Kalinski, 225^
Kempfer, 141, 146, 17a 18a 253,
278.
Kennicott, 1, Ivii, 203, 215, 300, 301,
364, 367, 384, 405.
Kimchi, 135, 137, 143, 149, 170,
177, 180, 188, 197, 206, 207, 209,
212, 233, 238, 241, 246, 248, 286,
306, 320, 325, 346, 364, 370, 380,
385, 40a
Labid, 200.
Lactantius, 357.
Lardner, 365.
La Roque, 273.
Le Clerc, 14.3, 229, 233, 286, 290,
322, 326, 349, 398, 399, 402, 404.
Lilienthal, 374, 380, 398.
Livy, 249.
Locke, 138.
Longinus, 135, 332.
Lowman, 381.
Lowth, 140, 213, 226, 233, 242, 306.
Lucan, 167, 170; 214, 236, 276.
Lucretius, 278, 282, 382.
Ludolphus, 315.
Macrobius, 404.
MaiUet, 405.
Maimonides, 225,' 365.
Martial, 150.
Maundrell, 145, 146, 147, 155, 171,
.:,, 204, 217, 222, 274, 350, 374.
Megasthenes, 246.
Meir, Rabbi, 248, 3-23.
Mela, 333.
Merrick, 373.

INDEX OF PERSONS.

417

Micliaelis, 148, 151, 168, 170, 171,
175, 200, 229, 24.3, 270, 343, 344,
349, 330.
Miller, 140, 292.
Millius, Dav. 399, 404.
Milton, 223.
Moerlius, 208, 373.
Mohammed, 148, 135, 200, 256.
Montagu, L. Mary, 305.
Mosheim, 313.
Montfaucon, Ivi.
MuUer, 200, 242.
Munster, 363.
Nau, 171.
Nebuchadnezzar, 227, 240, 246, 237,
261, 262, 297, 333.
Nepos, 351.
Newton, Sir L 187, 266.
 Bp. 240, 262.
Niebuhr, 148, 193, 278, 35a
Ninus, 259.
Nonnus, 174.
Onkelos, xxxv.
Origen, viii, 346, 366, 367.
Osbeck, 368.
Ovid, 135, 150, 219, 334.
Owen, 24.3, 394.
Pachomius, liv.
Palladius, 171.
Paul Lucas, 156, 164.
Fausanias, 179.
Pekah, 130.
Perizonius, 259.
Persius, 171.
Phile, 319.
Philo, xli, 240.
Pietro della Valle, 160, 164, 222, 25a
324.
Pindar, 341, 349.
Plato, 357.
Pliny, 140, 146, 154, 160, 176, 236,
308, 335, 404, 406.
Pococke, 236, 240, 305.
Prideaux, 229, 243, 365, 389.
Procopius, xliii, 199, 280, 403.
Prodicus, 163.
Psammitichus, 239, 244.
Psellus, 280.
Ptolemy Philometer, 242.
Soter, 240. ¦

Publius Syr. 165.
Randolph, 325.

Rauwolf, 272.
Reland, 171, 233.
Retsin, 130, 186, 194.
Russell, 161, 405.
Sal. ben Melee, 134, 137, 169, 178,
184, 207, 209, 230, 307, 322, 325,
346, 363, 370, 393, 40a
Sale, 148, 256, 300.
Salmasius, 140, 161.
Salvian, 219.
Sanctius, 161, 166.
Sandys, 160, 172, 262.
Sardanapalus, 215.
Scaliger, ii.
Schindler, 137, 201, 270, 367.
Schmidius, 399.
Schroeder, 161, 195, 289.
Schultens, 137, 157, 200, 231, 237,
238, 356, 393.
Secker, xxxi, Ivi, 143, 159, 169, 177,
189, 192, 197, 198, 204, 206, 207,
209, 2ia 232, 241, 242, 263, 265,
277, 28.3, 286, 291, 292, 294, 298,
30a 322, 324, 326, 327, 331, 338,
34a 344, 349, 354, 356, 357, 363,
370, 371, 373, 377, 378, 393, 396,
403.
Semiramis, 246, 313, 328.
Senacherib, 131, 206, 209, 210, -234,
237, 244, 279, 29a 294, 301, 327.
Seneca, 237, 264.
Servius, 238, 367.
Shalmaneser, 131, 187, 206, 227, 232,
262 275 327.
Shaw,' 160,' 204, 256, 274, 282, 300,
319, 342.
Shebna, 252, 233.
Sherlock, 152.
Simonis, 205, 211, 237, 240, 331.
Solinus, 170.
Solomon, 147, 148, 131, 138, 204,
251, 256.
Spencer, 330.
Strabo, 146, 153, 170, "221, 226, 236,
328, 339.
Suetonius, 383.
Surenhusius, 364.
Symmachus, xliii, Ivi, 144, 177, 246,
326, 330, 343, 364.
Tacitus, 383.
Tavernier, 136, 138, 155, 222, 387.
Taylor, Concord, 137, 256.
Terence, 262, 342.
Tharthan, 243.

418

INDEX OF PERSONS.

Themistius, 363.
Theocritus, 212.
Theodoret, xiii, 176, 178, 225.
Theodotion, xliii, Ivi, 134, 144, 177,
385.
Theophrastus, 363, 373.
Thevenot, 141, 171, 193, 25a 255,
268, 284, 405.
Tiglath PUeser, 130, 187, 196, 201,
204, 232.
Tirhakah, 244, 327.
Trallian, 171.
Valesius, 221.
Vasco de Gama, 135.
Vegetius, 330.
Virgil, 1. 147, 150, 170, 178, 180,
197, 202, 212, 220, 226, 258, 280,
281, 290, 339, 368, 371, 398.

Vitringa, ii, xxxi, 130, 213, 215, 218,
227, 230, 232, 239, 262, 288, 312,
321, 327, 354, 362, 379, 383, 385,
393, 396, 397, 403.
Ulloa, 140.
Vossius, 145.
Usher, 187.
Uzziah, 129, 226.
Wetstein, xlix, 296.
Woide, Iv, 269.
Wolfius, ii, xxxiii, 215.
Xenophon, 160, 165, 180, 214, 218,
220, 225, 333, 334, 335, 336, 342,
35a
Xerxes, 221.

INDEX OF THINGS,

Acrostic ; see Alphabetical.
Abraham, 320.
— — .— his bosom, 406.
Additions, Hebrew text, xxxv, 192,
218, 286, 306, 344, 345, 369, 379,
384.
.Xneid, xlviii.
Africa, 154.
Agriculture, 277.
Alcahol, 160.
Alexandria, Jewish church there, liii.
— — ^-^— many Jews there, 240,
26a
Allegory, mystical, 313.
Alphabetical, twelve Hebrew poems.

their cause and

use, IV.
Alternate members, xix.
— ^-^ singing ; see Responsive.
Anomalies, probably corruptions, 145,
170, 335, 390.
Anthropopathia, 142, 287.
Ancient versions, Iii, 343.
^^— — ^— ^— confirmed by He
brew MSS, Iii, liii.
, some examples of it,

145, 13a 157, 223, 239, 280, 282,
28a 291, 320, 321, 325, 326, 331,
343, 343, 349, 33a 355, 356, 364,
370, 372, 375, 377, 382, 386, 390,
396, 405.
Apocalyps of Elias, 394.
Arabic version, liv, 230.
Arabs, different sorts of them, .324.
Armour, burning of, emblem of peace,
202.
Ascension of Esaiah, 394.
Assyrians and Babylonians the same,
226.
Azotus, 244.
Babylon,-245, 259.
 its naval power, 327.
 greatness and ruin, 220,
221.

Babylon, the total annihilation of its
walls accounted for, 221.
 how taken, 245, 332, 334.
— — Prophecy on it, beautiful,
215.
^^— ^^ deliverance from it, a sha
dow of deUverance by Christ, 315,
316.
Balaam's prophecies, xxii.
Beard, highly honoured in the East,
193.
Botsra, 297, 389.
Buildings, eastern, 204, 221, 284.
Cape of Good Hope passed, 154.
Cassiterides, 154.
Caverns large, for refuge, 155.
Chaldee Paraphrase, xxxi, xxxv, Iv,
140, 204, 207, 231, 282, 298, 320,
321, 325, 345, 380.
Chambers, eastern, 305.
Chapters, not in order of time, 181.
 not rightly divided, 167,
203, 215, 227, 272.
Chasdim, Chaldeans, 259.
Chinese chronology, 400.
Chittim, 257.
Chorus, 216, 293, 343, 387.
Collation of MSS necessary, xlix.
Heb. MSS, how' far useful.

1, Ii, liv, Ivii.

— requires long
examination, Ivii.
 MSS of LXX very
desirable, Iv.
Comparison, particles of, omitted, .386.
Conjectures, concurrent, 284.
— ,— ^.^^ in correcting, xxxi.
— ^— — ^— ^ in translating, Hi.
 the latter as hazardous as
the former, Iii, 396.
Construct state for absolute, probably
a mistake, 169, 307.
Construction of sentences, suddenly
changed, 388, 343.
— :— alternate, xix.

420

INDEX OF THINGS.

Coptic version, Iv, 181, 269, .346, 366.
Copyists, Jewish, fallible, xlvii. Hi.
— -^^^-^— ^ their customs in
writing, xlvii, 170.
Corner, the place of honour in the
East, 305.
Corruptions, perhaps wilful, liii, 395.
Counes, an eastern vehicle, 405.
Cymbal, 235.
Cup of God's wrath, 142, 356.
Damascus, 145, 232.
Delphi, oracle there, 339.
Dream, similitude from, 281.
Eagle, 319.
 Cyrus's ensign, 342.
Edomites, 297.
¦ settled in Judea, 389.
Egypt, 234—236, 239, 24a
Elath, port, 129.
Elegiac verses, in Hebrew, xxv.
Ellipsis, 138, 209, 253, 320, 325,
373.
English version, vulgar, xxix, xli,
Iviii.
— ^-^— ^— revision of it expe
dient, Ivi, lix.
- versions old, sometimes bet

ter, 302.
Eshcol, 171.
Euphrates, 328, 333.
Eziongeber, 154.
Expedition of eastern monarchs, the
raanner of it, 313.
Fathers, Christian, generally bad com
mentators on the prophecies, xliii.
Figs, 274.
Flocks, great care in driving them
necessary, 318.
Footstool, 357, 383.
Fuel, 27a
Gardens in the East, 143.
Garments, transparent, 165.
Gate, the place of judicature, 282.
Gehenna, 286, 406.
Gemara of Babylon, .364.
Gentiles called by Christ, 355, 369.
381, 396, 402.
Girdle, 179, 212.
Glosses, from margin into text, 192,
285.
Gog and Magog, 390.
Golden age, 212.

Gourd-kind, fruits of the, much in
request in the East, 137.
Greek New Test, its non-integrity,
xlv, xlvi.
1 version Of the Old Testament,
its importance, liii, 139, 183, 192,
213, 23a 282, 284, 291, 300, 304,
308, 315, 330, 392.
-^-^— ^— — . interpolated, 181.
- altered, perhaps wil-

fuUy, Hu, 243.

MSS of LXX

very
useful, 166, 230, 232, 244, 264,
284, 289, 329, 330, 380, 385, 392.
¦ collation of them

now necessary, liv.
 MS Pachom. and MS
I. D. II. Br. Mus. liv, 166, 181,
209, 219, 231, 232, 248, 284, 289,
324, 329, 337, 349, 380, 385.
Groves, sacred, 143.
Hades, iraage of, 177, 216.
HaUe Bible, Ivi.
Half-pause, in long verses, xxv, xxvii.
Hands, marks on, 330, 350.
Harbinger of eastern monarchs, 313.
Harian metre confuted, viii.
Hebraisms, 274, 316.
Heb. alphabet, only consonants, vii.
 Bible, left complete by Ezra,
xlv, 1.
^^—^— mistakes in it early, xxxiii,
315, 395.
.^—^— — now incorrect, xlvii.
 its integrity strangely be
lieved, xlv. its true readings how re

coverable, liii.
 letters similar, the sources of
error, xlvi, xlvii.
 MSS, now extant, how old, 1,
Iviii.
^— ^— the present collation of them,
1, H, Iv.
 poetry, its characteristic, xl.
 verses not in rhyme, vii, viii.
 longer and shorter,.xxii — xxvii.
 words single, require many En
glish, xxxvi.
Homage, eastern modes of, 351,
357.
Horites, 153.
Hosts, for God of Hosts, 138.
Houses in the East, 250.
Hunting, ancient, 264.

INDEX OF THINGS.

421

Jackal, 137.
Idolatry exposed, 331.
Idolatrous practices among the Jews,
397, 399.
Idumea, 389.
Jerusalem, tlie Valley of Vision, 230.
Jeshurun, 329.
Jewels of the feet, nostrils, &c. 1 62.
Jews, great destructions of them, 183.
— ^ present dispersion, with a con
fession for them, 391.
Iliad, xlvui.
Images poetical, fVom nature, &c. l53,
337.
—.^— emblematical of heaven and
heU, 406.
Infinitives absolute, for tenses past,
247. , signify imperatively, 291.
Intercalary stanza, xxvi.
Interpolation ; see Additions.
Job, book, already aUowed poetical,
ii, xxii.
Isaiah, book, Hi.
^^^^— — history of its time, 129.
— — Notes here, their design,
lx.
Israel sometimes means the Messiah,
349.
 people, carried away, in 6th
Hezekiah, 131.
 .  finaUy, 22d
Manasseh, 187.
Judea called the Mountain, 170.
 wilderness of, 314.
Keys, ancient, 254.
 mark of office, 254.
Kingdom of Christ, under the image
of a feast, 267, 406.
Koran, 155, 200, 256, 300.
Lake, below the wine-press, 173.
Latter days, 149.
Lebanon, House of the Forest of, 257.
 and Carmel, 282.
Leviathan, the crocodile, and the ser
pent, 272.
Libation, 283.
Literal sense, the necessary founda
tion of all interpretations, xli, xiii,
lx.
^—^—  may be the mystical, or
spiritual, .362.
.—  is so ; see Messiah.
London Polyglott, Hi.

Magian religion, 335.
Marks on the hands, 330, 350.
Mashal, its nature, xxx, 184, 223,
277, 282.
Masoretes, their pauses and punctua
tion, viii, XX, xliii.
— ^— wretched critics, 326.
Medicean MS of Virgil, Ii.
Medicine and surgery, 136.
Messiah himself, 168, 182, 186, 192,
195, 211, 291, 310, 323, 337, 347,
348, 349, 353, .361, 365, 368, 369,
378, 389.
 his kingdom, 148, 182, 186,
195, 201, 211, 214, 266, 267, 291,
310, 312, 316, 338, 333, 369, 378,
381, 389, 396, 401.
Metre of things ; see Rhythmus.
Mills, grinding at, the work of fe
males, 342.
Mirrors of metal, 1 95.
Mishna, 364.
Moukden, present Emperor of China's
poem, 400.
Mizmor, its nature, xl.
Naliaraga, 333.
Naharraalca, 328, 333.
Nails, ancient, 253.
Necroraancy, 280.
Negative, understood as if repeated,
258, 320.
Nile, 237, 240, 258.
 Shichor, 238.
Nose-jewels, 163.
Ode on K. Babylon, most excellent,
216—218.
Old Testament, defective method of
studying it, xliii.
Omissions, Heb. Text, xxv. Hi, 134,
151, 13a 157, 166, 175, 180, 181,
198, 213, 219, 223, 228, 241, 252,
25a 282, 283, 285, 291, 299, 301,
303, 308, 321, 322, 325, 330, 333,
344, 345, 349, 351, 354, 364, .370,
371, 374, 376, 377, 379, .384, 385,
402, 403, 405.
Onias's temple, 242.
Ophel, 291.
Ophir, 154.
Pallacopas, 333.
Palm-wine, 176, 26a
ParaboHc style, 153, 218, 263, 272,
320, .32a 347, 352, 370, 371, 381.

H li

422

INDEX OF THINGS.

Parallelism of verses or Unes, ix," xxxii.
.  attention to, useful in in
terpreting poetical parts of Scrip
ture, xxx.
ParaUel lines, synonymous, ix.
— ^^— ^ — antithetic, ix, xv.
^— ^^—  synthetic, ix, xvii.
— ^— places, useful in correcting,
227, 228, 230— -232, 302, 306, 309,
315.
Paronomasia, 175, 265, 290, 308, .384.
Participle, for future tense, 331.
Passover, the manner of that deliver
ance, 288.-
Perfumes, eastern, 165.
Personification, iv.
Port, the, whence the narae, 283.
Presents to the great in the East ne
cessary, 374..
Prophecies of Isaiah, not prose, ii.
.^-^^  - not now in order
of time, 136, 181.
Prosopopoeia, 217.
Proverbs of Solomon, xvi, xxii.
—————^—— allowed poeti
cal, ii.
Psalms, already allowed poetical, ii,
xxii.
' ill-divided, xxvi.
Rabbinical evasion, 403.
Responsive song, xli, 183, 272, 316,
317.
Resurrection, a common doctrine,271.
Rhythmus of things, xxxiii — xli,
Rice, how planted, 292.
Roraans, destruction of Jerusalem by,
262.
Saba, reservoir of, 148.
Sahidic version, 366.
Samaria, 273.
*Scoffers, 273.
Seder Olam, 187.
Separation of Psalms, xxvi.
 words, 284, 373.
Sepulchres, 253, 367, 368.
jSickness and sin considered as equi
valent, 295.
Sidon, mother-city of Tyre, 258.
Siloah, 196, 252.
Singulars sometimes for plurals, 331.
Sitting in the East, comraon manner
of, 358.
¦  in state, 358.
Sisti-ura, 235.

Sorek, in Judah, vines of, 171.
Spanish version, 139, 161.
Speech of ghosts supposed feeble, 280.~
Spitting, an expression of detestation,
353.
Standard copy, none infallible, liii.
Strong drink, 176, 263.
Supreme Beings, two, Persian, 335.
Syriac version, Iv, 213, 247, 355, 392.
Tabor, Mount, 171.
Talmud, Babylonish, 1,58, 349.
Tarshish, where, 134, 257.
 ships, 154, 237.
Teraphim consulted, 152.
Threshing, 247, 269, 278.
Tophet, 286.
Transcribers; see Copyists.
Translations, modern, whether in La
tin, or for the use of the Protestant
Churches, all from the pointed He
brew text, xliii.
Translator's duty, xxviii, xxix, xHi.
Transpositions, Hebrew text, 186, 198;
307. -
Treasures of Cyrus, 335.
Trees, long-Hved, 400,
Troglodytes, 155.
Tyre, 257—262.
Van, ancient, 285.
Various readings, Hebrew, publication
of commended, xlix.
Veil, to shade the court, 318.
Ventriloqui, 280.
Verse, its characteristics, iv — viii, xx,
xU. ¦
Verses, ill-divided, 139, 218, 299,
401.
— ^^^ long or short, xxii.
Versions of versions useful, Iv, 180,
230.
Vineyard-tower, 173.
Vines, large trunks of, 172.
- poisonous fruit of, 174.
Vowel . points, not original, nor by
Ezra, xliv.
Vulgale, xxviii, Ivi, 135, 175, 185,
198, 218, 232, 283, 301, 321, 322,
325. - authentic, by Council of
Trent, xlv.
Wardrobes, Eastern, 138.
Watchmen in the Temple, 387.
Water, in gardens, 143.

INDEX OF THINGS.

423

Wine mixed, 141.
Wine-press, 173.
Wines, 267.
Women celebrate great events, 317.
Words, many now lost in the text of
Isaiah, Hi.
 wrongly divided, 153, 273.
World, sometimes for land or country,
219, 263.
»JTN for mnS 18a 20a 205, 207,
2ia 285, 307.
n'lX and T'N, 392.
D"J< and D"S, 239, 263, 325.'
a and 3 mistaken, 177, 189, 209,
228, 380, 404.
BxirvXoi, 373.
nina, 368.
1 and 1 mistaken, 197, 198, 204,
2-28, 251, 267, 281, 285, 326.
]Yhi, 193.
1 omitted at the half-pause, xxv.

1 for xbi, 258.
D^t and Dill changed, 266, 267.
nXIsn, punishment for sin, 313.
' necessary, 1st person preterite, 270,
325.
xb and lb changed, 283, 290.
mb and "iSb changed, 210, 270,
330.
D, plural termination, frequently omit
ted, 170, 335.
¦nnm, xi.
bipn, as n, 263.
bwn, XXX, 22a 277, 282.
issiyn, 323.
DX3, solemn delivery of prophecy,
230.
nos, 288.
np'lS, 323, 335.
iTll', the glowing sand in the East,
300.

Remarkable Variations in the Text of Isaiah, where there is
little Similitude between the Words.
Chapter.
ix. 8. Chald.
xxiv. 18. MS, Chald. Vulg.
XXXVU. 9. LXX and parallel place.
xxxvii. 18. ten MSS.
XXXVU. -24. LXX, Syr.
xUi. 19. MS, Sym.
xlvii. 9. LXX, Syr.
xlix. 24. Syr. Vulg.
Hi. 9. two MSS.
Iviii. 10. eight MSS, Syr.
lx. 4. MS.
Ixiii. 11. two MSS, vet. edit. Syr.
Ixiu. 16. MS.
Ixiii. 18. LXX.
lxiv. 2. four MSS.
Ixv. 25. MS, LXX, Syr. Vulg.

Text,

Variations.

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Edinburgh.
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