PREFACE. COMMENTARIES on Isaiah are too numerous to allow a new one to be usefully published, unless it is written with a somewhat different aim from that of others. The aim of the following pages is to explain the Book historically. For this purpose its several parts are here arranged chronologically, in the order of the events to which they relate, which is not wholly the same as the order in which they were written. In that way only can historical notes be conveniently used, and the reader's attention secured to the temporary circumstances under which each sentence was written. The translation is the same, excepting a few words, as that in the writer's "Hebrew Scriptures Translated," 3rd Edition. The references in the Notes to other parts of the Bible are also to the same translation, as the Authorized Version is often wanting in accuracy. Isaiah was called to the office of a Prophet, as a teacher of his countrymen in Jerusalem, in the first year of Jotham's reign, B.C. 749; and his earliest writings are of that reign or of the reign of Jotham's son Ahaz, whom Jotham joined to himself on the throne. Of the writings usually called prophetic, Zechariah chap. xi. had been already written under Menahem, king of Israel, in the latter years of Uzziah's long reign. The prophets Joel and Amos were both living; Isaiah may have been younger than either of them, as he lived into the middle of Hezekiah's reign. Micah and Hosea, as also the writer of Zechariah ix., x., all lived at the same time as Isaiah. Nahum, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah arose one hundred years later. If we may venture to class these writers according to their excellence, perhaps we ought to say that Isaiah is not equal to either Joel, who came before him, or Nahum, who followed him, but he is superior to all the rest. In Greece, Homer, and perhaps Hesiod, are older than Isaiah; but there are no other writers of name that did not arise long after his time. Isaiah, however, has gained a character from writings which are not his own. After the return from Babylon, such new writings as were then published were very much put forth, either on purpose or by accident, under the names of those who had lived before the fall of the monarchy; and hence the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel received large additions. But when we take away from Isaiah what does not belong to him, he will yet keep a high place among the Hebrew prophets. The writings which have been classed together under the name of Isaiah range over five centuries. The age of each portion must be learnt from the facts of history which it mentions; and hence the reader who would form an opinion of their age must first make himself acquainted with the history of the Hebrew nation, not only as related in the Bible, but as continued in the Apocrypha, in Josephus, and even in Roman history. There is but little difficulty in setting apart those writings which are not by Isaiah, and giving each to the age in which it was written, since they are separated by centuries rather than by years. But there is a greater difficulty in putting Isaiah's own writings into order, more particularly those which relate to the time of Sennacherib's wars against Hezekiah, as the Book of Kings gives us a very indistinct account of the several Assyrian invasions in that reign. |