History of the Jews (Vol. 1-6). Graetz Heinrich

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СКАЧАТЬ language. Of his private life but little is known. His wife was also gifted with prophetic insight. He wore the usual prophet's dress—a garment of goat's hair. Like Elijah, he considered his prophetic task as the vocation of his life. His energies were entirely directed to exposing wickedness, to warning and exhorting the nation, and to holding before it the ideal of a future, to attain which it must strive with heart and soul. He gave his sons symbolical names, indicative of future events, to serve as signs and types. For more than forty years (755–710) he pursued his prophetic ministration with untiring zeal and unshaken courage. In critical moments, when all—great and small, kings and princes—despaired, his confidence never deserted him, but aroused the hope and courage of his people.

      Isaiah first appeared in the year of king Uzziah's death (755), when he was about thirty-three years of age. He announced to the nation (probably on the Temple Mount) the vision which he had been vouchsafed, and his election as a prophet. Isaiah's first speech was a short, simple communication of this vision, the deep meaning of which could not be misunderstood. He related that he had seen in a dream Jehovah Zebaoth on a high and exalted throne, surrounded by the winged seraphim. One seraph after another cried, "Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah Zebaoth," with such thrilling voices that the very supports of the Temple trembled:

      "Then I said, Woe is me, for I am undone; I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.

      "Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar, and he touched therewith upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged."

      In his first speech, Isaiah had but lightly touched on the sins of the nobles, only intimating that they were not alive to pure influences. In another speech, which has been preserved, he went into greater detail, and more especially held up a mirror to the princes of Judah wherein they might see their folly and sin. He described the ideal destiny of the people of Israel, of the Law which had been entrusted to it, and of the Temple which was to be its visible representation, and he chose for his purpose the ever-memorable words of an older prophet:

      "For from Zion shall the law go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."

      In this speech Isaiah touched the root of the evil which had produced that state of religious demoralisation and heartless injustice which he denounced. It was pleasure-seeking and wantonness, encouraged by the women, to satisfy whom the men were continually urged to commit depredations, and to pillage and enslave their weaker neighbours. With surprising force the prophet describes the love of display of the daughters of Zion. Leaving for a moment this sad picture, the speaker attunes a cheery, hope-inspiring strain:—

      "The Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day and the brightness of a flaming fire by night. For upon all the glory shall be a covering. There shall be a tabernacle for a shade in the daytime from the heat, and for refuge, and for a covert from tempest and from rain."

      It may be questioned whether this masterly speech, perfect though it was in subject and form, made any impression for the moment. At all events it led to no lasting improvement, for Isaiah and contemporary prophets had still often to preach against the same errors and the same sins. The nobles could not easily be converted; they scorned and scoffed at the threats of an awful future. But Isaiah's powerful words have not been spoken in vain; they have influenced people to whom they were not addressed; they have been heard in distant lands, among distant nations, and in remote days. Isaiah did not content himself with inveighing against sin; he depicted a moral ideal, through the realisation of which men would find happiness and contentment. "The king shall rule with justice, and cause the princes to govern according to right." "The king shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, and shall not decide after the hearing of his ears." Isaiah treated with great contempt the hypocrisy which praises God with the lips whilst the heart is far from Him. He scorned still more the offering of sacrifices combined with baseness of thought and wickedness of deed. (Isaiah xxix. 13; i. 11–14.)

      Isaiah appears to have used other means besides soul-stirring sermons, in order to heal the moral and religious ills of Judah. Adopting the measures of Elijah and Samuel, he assembled around himself those who shared his principles, or instructed young men and imbued them with his spirit. From among those who had suffered from the injustice and tyranny of the nobles of Judah, he drew into his circle the thoughtful and susceptible, who became at once his disciples and his children. He did not instil into them impatient and impetuous zeal, but he impressed on them the virtues of gentleness, patience, and entire resignation to God. The members of the circle which he had collected around him were called the "gentle ones," or "the sufferers of the land" (Anavim, Anve-Arez). They were mostly either of poor family, or impoverished through the depredations of the nobles. They called themselves or were called "the poor" (Dallim, Ebionim). From Isaiah they learnt not to complain of poverty and spoliation, but to bear suffering and wrong with faith in God and His dispensations. These "gentle ones" formed a special community, to which they devoted all their heart and mind, and to which Isaiah and his successors looked forward as the national core and substance. They were expected to regenerate and purify the entire people. These poor Anavim were to become the popular models of virtue. The light shed by these great prophets cast beneficent rays around; germs of thought, which lay hidden in the teachings of Sinai, came to light, and the spiritual rulership of the nation became established through them. Isaiah, therefore, forms a turning point in the national history of the people of Israel, as Samuel and, in a lesser degree, Elijah had done before him. Isaiah's prophetic view was not confined to his nation and country; it passed beyond these boundaries to the two great states of Egypt and Assyria, which, like great cloud-masses, were soon to cast their electric flashes over Israel and Judah.

      Another prophet, named Zechariah, son of Berechiah, rose up against the continued perversions of the times. This prophet's oratory could not compare with the fiery and graceful eloquence of his contemporary, Isaiah. He is wanting in power and continuity; he does not let thought follow thought in logical sequence, but passes without any perspicuous connection from one subject to another. The language of Zechariah, too, is poetically tinted and not without symmetry, but it lacks the scansion and other forms of poetry. Zechariah frequently employs the metaphor of shepherd and flock, which he applies to the relation between king and people. He unrolls the picture of a glorious future, in order to lift the people up above the dispiriting present. He predicts that the neighbouring nations, who were hostile to Israel,—the Aramæans, Tyrians, and even the Philistines—would acknowledge the God of Israel, and would be accepted as His children, when they have laid aside their evil deeds and their false pride. He also prophesies that God would make peace between the house of Judah and the house of Ephraim, and that He would bring back their exiles. Even though He had dispersed them amongst the nations, they would remember Him in their banishment, and return to Him with their children. The pride of Assyria would be humbled, the Egyptian rod be stayed. This declaration closed with the prospect that of the entire nation only a third should survive; but even this remnant would have to pass through the refining crucible of trials in order to become worthy of its mission as the people of God. Zechariah made special allusions to Pekah, king of Israel, as the "false shepherd," who had treated his flock more ruthlessly than his predecessors. He relates how God appointed a shepherd over His people, and gave him two staves—one named "Mercy," and the other "Concord." But the nation had rejected God, and therefore it had been rejected by God, who broke the staff of mercy, and annulled the covenant He had made with all the tribes of Israel; and now He would break the second staff, the "staff of Concord," to annul the friendship between the tribes of Israel and Judah. God had placed over them a foolish shepherd who did not seek for the lambs that are lost—who did not heal the wounded, and who devoured the flesh of the healthy ones. The nation, it is true, deserved no better guide; nevertheless, the shepherd who had thus deserted his flock would surely incur the chastisement of God.

      CHAPTER XIV. THE END OF THE KINGDOM СКАЧАТЬ