Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 1:22
Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:
22. silver and wine may refer to the great men of the city ( Isa 1:23) but more naturally to the “judgment” and “righteousness” of Isa 1:21; all that was best in her, purity of morals, excellence of character, &c. The word for mixt occurs only here. The phrase is usually illustrated by the Latin “castrare vinum,” the verb being taken as connected with that for “circumcise.”
wine ] better: choice drink, found elsewhere only in Hos 4:18.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Thy silver – The sentiment in this verse, as it is explained by the following, is, thy princes and people have become corrupt, and polluted. Silver is used here to denote what should have been more valuable – virtuous princes.
Dross – This word – sg – means the scoriae, or baser metal, which is separated from the purer in smelting. It is of little or no value; and the expression means, that the rulers had become debased and corrupt, as if pure silver had been converted wholly to dross.
Thy wine – Wine was regarded as the most pure and valuable drink among the ancients. It is used, therefore, to express that which should have been most valued and esteemed among them – to wit, their rulers.
Mixed with water – Diluted, made weak. According to Gesenius, the word rendered mixed – mahul – is from mahal, the same as mul, to circumcise; and hence, by a figure common with the Arabians, to adulterate, or dilute wine. The word does not occur in this sense elsewhere in the Scriptures, but the connection evidently requires it to be so understood. Wine mixed with water is that which is weakened, diluted, rendered comparatively useless. So with the rulers and judges. They had lest the strength and purity of their integrity, by intermingling those things which tended to weaken and destroy their virtue, pride, the love of gifts, and bribes, etc. Divested of the figure, the passage means, that the rulers had become wholly corrupt.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 1:22-23
Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water.
Silver
The silver represents the princes and lords, viewed with reference to the nobility of mind associated with their nobility of birth and rank; for silver–sterling silver–is a symbol of all that is noble and pure, and it is the purity of light which shows itself in it, as in the pure white of byssus and of the lily. The princes and lords formerly possessed the virtues which together are in Latin called candor animi,–the virtues of magnanimity, courtesy, impartiality, and freedom from the influence of bribes; now, this silver has become dross, such base metals as are separated or thrown aside. (F. Delitzsch.)
Diluted wine
In a second figure, the leading men of Jerusalem in former days are compared to choice wine, such as drinkers like. This pure, strong, and costly wine is now adulterated with water, or weakened; i.e., through this addition, its strength and flavour are diminished. The present is but the dregs and the shadow of the past. (F. Delitzsch.)
Impaired
The essential idea seems to be that of impairing strength, (J. A. Alexander.)
The possible degeneracy of valuable things
There are many valuable and good things in the world that through varied causes are rendered comparatively useless.
I. THE SILVER OF THY CHARACTER HAS BECOME DROSS BECAUSE OF LITTLE FAILINGS.
II. THE SILVER OF THY SERVICE HAS BECOME DROSS BECAUSE OF UNHOLY MOTIVES.
III. THE SILVER OF THY MONEY HAS BECOME DROSS BECAUSE OF SELFISHNESS.
IV. THE SILVER OF THY TALENTS HAS BECOME DROSS BECAUSE OF INDOLENCE. Silver is bright when kept in use. Talents are valuable when active. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Sinful compromise and its results
Thy wine is mixed with water–that sounds like a compromise. Thy wine diluted; it is the corruption of the ideal. Thy princes are rebellions–that is the corruption of government. Everyone loveth gifts and followeth after rewards–that is the corruption of justice. They, judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them–that is the corruption of the tenderest ties of the heart. Do you see where you begin? You begin by mixing wine and water, you begin by illicit compromise, by lowering and corrupting the ideal, and you end in cruelty, you forget God, then the ideal is forgotten, then yourself is forgotten, you forget your neighbour, and the cause of the widow makes no appeal to you. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 22. Wine mixed with water] An image used for the adulteration of wines, with more propriety than may at first appear, if what Thevenot says of the people of the Levant of late times were 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 facon des Levantins, qui ne le melent jamais avec de l’eua; 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. x. “Ils (les Turcs) n’y meslent jamais d’eau, et se moquent des Chretiens qui en mettent, ce qui leur semble tout a fait ridicule.” Ibid. part i., chap. 24. “The Turks never mingle water with their wine, and laugh at the Christians for doing it, which they consider altogether ridiculous.”
It is remarkable 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 made stronger and more inebriating by the addition of higher and more powerful ingredients, such as honey, spices, defrutum, (or wine inspissated by boiling it down to two-thirds or one-half of the quantity,) myrrh, mandragora, opiates, and other strong drugs. Such were the exhilarating, or rather stupifying, ingredients which Helen mixed in the bowl together with the wine for her guests oppressed with grief to raise their spirits, the composition of which she had learned in Egypt: –
‘ ‘ , ,
‘ , .
HOMER. Odyss. lib. iv., ver. 220.
“Meanwhile, with genial joy to warm the soul,
Bright Helen mix’d a mirth-inspiring bowl;
Temper’d with drugs of sovereign use, to assuage
The boiling bosom of tumultuous rage:
Charm’d with that virtuous draught, the exalted mind
All sense of wo delivers to the wind.”
POPE.
Such was the “spiced wine and the juice of pomegranates,” mentioned So 8:2. And how much the Eastern people to this day deal in artificial liquors of prodigious strength, the use of wine being forbidden, may be seen in a curious chapter of Kempfer upon that subject. Amoen. Exot. Fasc. iii., Obs. 15.
Thus the drunkard is properly described, Pr 23:30, as one “that seeketh mixed wine,” and “is mighty to mingle strong drink,” Isa 5:22. And hence the poet took that highly poetical and sublime image of the cup of God’s wrath, called by Isaiah, Isa 51:17, the “cup of trembling,” causing intoxication and stupefaction, (see Chappelow’s note on Hariri, p. 33,) containing, as St. John expresses in Greek the Hebrew idea with the utmost precision, though with a seeming contradiction in terms, , merum mixtum, pure wine made yet stronger by a mixture of powerful ingredients; Re 14:10. “In the hand of JEHOVAH,” saith the psalmist, Ps 75:8, “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, vaiyagger mizzeh al zeh, and he pours it from this to that, “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.”
R. D. Kimchi says, “The current coin was adulterated with brass, tin, and other metals, and yet was circulated as good money. The wine also was adulterated with water in the taverns, and sold notwithstanding for pure wine.”
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thou art woefully degenerated from thy former purity. If there be any remainders of religion and justice in thee, they are mixed with many and great corruptions.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
22. Thy princes and people aredegenerate in “solid worth,” equivalent to “silver”(Jer 6:28; Jer 6:30;Eze 22:18; Eze 22:19),and in their use of the living Word, equivalent to “wine”(So 7:9).
mixedliterally,”circumcised.” So the Arabic, “to murder”wine, equivalent to dilute it.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Thy silver is become dross,…. Meaning either that such persons, who had the appearance of goodness, looked like genuine silver, were now become reprobate, and, as the wicked of the earth, like dross, Jer 6:30 or that the word of God, which is as silver purified seven times, was now corrupted with false glosses and human traditions, which were as dross:
thy wine mixed with water m; the wine of the divine word, which was mixed and blended with the inventions of men, as before; so the roof of the church’s mouth, which is no other than the ministry of the word, is compared to the best wine, So 7:9.
m It being usual to mix water with wine, and drink it, and this being not at all reproachful, but commendable, Gussetius thinks such a version does not express the sense of the words; he therefore thinks that is the same as contracted, which signified “infatuated”; and so the words should be rendered, “thy wine is infatuated into water”; is degenerated, and has lost its spirit and sprightliness, and is become insipid and tasteless. So Jarchi mentions a Midrash, which interprets it by the same word in Ec 2:2. It is a word only used in this place. Joseph Kimchi says that in the Arabic, language has the signification of mixture, but without giving any instance. Indeed, according to Castel, it is used for the lees of oil.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The complaint now turns from the city generally to the authorities, and first of all figuratively. “Thy silver has become dross, thy drink mutilated with water.” It is upon this passage that the figurative language of Jer 6:27. and Eze 22:18-22 is founded. Silver is here a figurative representation of the princes and lords, with special reference to the nobility of character naturally associated with nobility of birth and rank; for silver – refined silver – is an image of all that is noble and pure, light in all its purity being reflected by it (Bhr, Symbolik, i. 284). The princes and lords had once possessed all the virtues which the Latins called unitedly Candor animi , viz., the virtues of magnanimity, affability, impartiality, and superiority to bribes. This silver had now become l’sigim , dross, or base metal separated (thrown off) from silver in the process of refining ( sig , pl. sigim , siggim from sug , recedere , refuse left in smelting, or dross: cf., Pro 25:4; Pro 26:23). A second figure compares the leading men of the older Jerusalem to good wine, such as drinkers like. The word employed here ( sobe ) must have been used in this sense by the more cultivated classes in Isaiah’s time (cf., Nah 1:10). This pure, strong, and costly wine was now adulterated with water ( lit. castratum , according to Pliny’s expression in the Natural History: compare the Horatian phrase, jugulare Falernum ), and therefore its strength and odour were weakened, and its worth was diminished. The present was nothing but the dross and shadow of the past.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
22. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water Isaiah speaks metaphorically, and by two comparisons shows here, that though the outward appearance of affairs was not openly overturned, yet their condition was changed and corrupted, so as to be widely different from what it had formerly been: for he says that dross now shines instead of gold, and that the wine, though it retains its color, has lost its flavour. “Though thou still make an empty show,” saith the Prophet, “yet nothing pure will be found in thee: that wine which was wont to be Stare in thee is corrupted; and though its color deceive the eye, its taste shows that it has been mixed. ”
All this means nothing more than that the Jews should lay aside hypocrisy, and should begin to confess their sins, and no longer flatter themselves after the manner of hypocrites. The comparisons here employed are exceedingly well adapted to this end, for dross bears some resemblance to gold; and in like manner, the color of wine mixed with water resembles that of pure wine; and yet both are very far from having that purity of which they make an outward show. In like manner hypocrites, by their hypocrisy, may be said to assume a false color of silver, though they are of no more value than dross, and indeed are the more detestable on this account, that, though they are exceedingly wicked, yet, with not less treachery than baseness, they present to God and to men those hollow pretensions by which they cloak their malice.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE POSSIBLE DEGENERACY OF VALUABLE THINGS
Isa. 1:22. Thy silver is become dross.
There are many valuable and good things in the world that through varied causes are rendered comparatively useless. They once were silver, but now they are dross.
I. The silver of thy character has become dross because of little failings. There have been men known to all of us, of good moral characters, of lofty and heroic soul, but they were betrayed into occasional faults [436] which many condoned, which others magnified, but which they themselves did not correct, until at last their silver became dross. The character depreciated in moral worth. It was no longer current as a thing of beauty. It had lost its value.
[436] You need not break the glasses of a telescope, or coat them over with paint, in order to prevent you from seeing through them. Just breathe upon them, and the dew of your breath will shut out all the stars. So it does not require great crimes to hide the light of Gods countenance. Little faults can do it just as well. Take a shield, and cast a spear upon it, and it will leave in it one great dent. Prick it all over with a million little needle shafts, and they will take the polish from it far more than the piercing of the spear. So it is not so much the great sins which take the freshness from our consciences, as the numberless petty faults which we are all the while committing.Beecher.
II. The silver of thy service has become dross because of unholy motives. Christian service is a good and precious thing, but how frequently is it rendered useless and vain by pride, by thoughts of self, and by secular motive [439] It is, indeed, as silver when rendered by a pure and loving heart, but alas! it too often becomes dross because of the unhallowed sentiment of the soul. The mite of the widow cast into the treasury was as silver, but the munificent gifts of the Pharisees were as dross. How much of the service rendered to the great God in the pulpit, pew, and school, is but dross! This is a solemn thought.
[439] Our end or motive in acting determines more than anything the quality of our actions. Not that a good end will sanctify a bad action, but a bad end will vitiate every action connected with it. If, for instance, in our religious services we seek the applause of men, we must expect no reward from God; the gratification of our pride and vanity is all the reward that such polluted services can obtain. In the account which is given of Jehu, we find that the very same action which was rewarded on account of its outward conformity with Gods command, was punished on account of the base principle by which he was influenced in performing it. He did well in extirpating the seed of Ahab, and was rewarded for it to the fourth generation: the blood which was shed was imputed to him as murder. Nor is there anything more common than for even religious persons to mistake the path of duty through an inattention to their own spirit. The disciples doubtless thought themselves under the influence of a commendable zeal when they would have called fire from heaven to consume a Samaritan village; as did Peter, also, when he cut off the ear of Malchus. We should therefore be peculiarly cautious with respect to this, lest by the mixture of any selfish motive or base affection we offend Him whom it is our desire and endeavour to please.Simeon.
III. The silver of thy money has become dross because of selfishness. We cannot estimate the wealth of a man by the money he has in possession, but often far better by the money he gives away. When men keep their riches to themselves, solely for their own use, they cease to be richthey are laden with coin that is not current; their silver has become dross. Liberality makes money worth its value [442] Generosity preserves wealth from all degenerating influences. How many so-called rich men have more dross than silver in this world.
[442] If we so love our riches that we would eternally possess them, let us not hoard them up in the earth, where we are sure to leave them, carrying nothing with us but the canker of our coin, which shall bear witness against us at the Day of Judgment; but let us send them before us into heaven, delivering them unto the poor, who are Gods factors and receivers; and so having conveyed and made over our goods, as it were by bills of exchange, we shall find the Lord a sure and all-sufficient paymaster, who will give us more than double usance, and yet pay us at the first sight. If we would have our coin continue sweet and good for a great space, let us know that there are for this purpose no garners comparable to poor mens stomachs, which will preserve our grain for our use unto life eternal. If we would have our clothes preserved from moths, and to last long, the backs of the naked are our safest wardrobes.Downame, 1644.
IV. The silver of thy talents has become dross because of indolence. Silver is bright when kept in use. Talents are valuable when active. The mind has talents of thought and wisdom. The heart has talents of sympathy and love. The hand has talents of help. The mouth has talents of blessing. Take care that thy silver does not become as dross.J. S. Exell.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(22) Thy silver is become dross . . .The two images describe the degeneracy of the rulers to whose neglect this disorder was due. (See Notes on Jer. 6:28-30.) Hypocrisy and adulteration were the order of the day. The coinage of judgment and justice was debased; the wine of spiritual life (Pro. 9:5), of enthusiasm and zeal for good, was diluted till it had lost all power to strengthen and refresh. In the salt that has lost its savour of Mat. 5:13 we have a like symbolism.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Isa 1:22 Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:
Ver. 22. Thy silver is become dross. ] Heb., Drosses, a proverbial kind of speech, deciphering apostasy. It is as if the prophet had said, There is nothing pure in thee, nothing sincere or simple: sed omnia fallacia, omnia fucata, omnia inquinata; but all things are deceitful, degenerate, and corrupt. Dross looketh like silver, and is nothing less. Wine mixed, or marred, with water hath the name of wine, when it is nil nisi vappa. Hypocrites are mere seemers, Jam 1:26 magicians, Job 13:16 having a form of knowledge, Rom 2:20 a form of godliness. 2Ti 3:5 Fair professors they are, and foul sinners. But be not deceived; God is not mocked; he is a faithful metallary, saith a Father, and will easily find out men’s mixtures. It is to be feared that be hath yet a further controversy with this nation for our hateful hypocrisy and apostasy, for where now, alas! is our ancient fervour and forwardness – our heating and whetting one another. Oh, how dull and diluted are we! &c.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
wine = liquor, or drink. Hebrew. saba’. App-27.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
silver: Jer 6:28-30, Lam 4:1, Lam 4:2, Eze 22:18-22, Hos 6:4
wine: Hos 4:18, 2Co 2:17
Reciprocal: Psa 12:1 – godly Isa 1:25 – purge Jer 6:30 – Reprobate silver
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Isa 1:22-23. Thy silver is become dross Thou art wofully degenerated from thy former purity. Thy wine mixed with water If there be any remains of religion and virtue in thee, they are mixed with many and great corruptions. Thy princes are rebellious Against me, their sovereign Lord; and companions of thieves Partly by giving them connivance and countenance, and partly by practising the same violence, and cruelty, and injustice that thieves used to do. Every one loveth gifts That is, bribes given to pervert justice.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1:22 Thy {f} silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:
(f) Whatever was pure in you before, is now corrupt, though you have an outward show.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
CHAPTER XIX
AT THE LOWEST EBB
Isa 1:1; Isa 22:1-25
IN the drama of Isaiahs life we have now arrived at the final act-a short and sharp one of a few months. The time is 701 B.C., the fortieth year of Isaiahs ministry, and about the twenty-sixth of Hezekiahs reign. The background is the invasion of Palestine by Sennacherib. The stage itself is the city of Jerusalem. In the clear atmosphere before the bursting of the storm Isaiah has looked round the whole world-his world-uttering oracles on the nations from Tyre to Egypt and from Ethiopia to Babylon. But now the Assyrian storm has burst, and all except the immediate neighbourhood of the prophet is obscured. From Jerusalem Isaiah will not again lift his eyes.
The stage is thus narrow and the time short, but the action one of the most critical in the history of Israel, taking rank with the Exodus from Egypt and the Return from Babylon. To Isaiah himself it marks the summit of his career. For half a century Zion has been preparing for, forgetting and again preparing for, her first and final struggle with the Assyrian. Now she is to meet her foe, face to face across her own walls. For forty years Isaiah has predicted for the Assyrian an uninterrupted path of conquest to the very gates of Jerusalem, but certain check and confusion there. Sennacherib has overrun the world, and leaps upon Zion. The Jewish nation await their fate, Isaiah his vindication, and the credit of Israels religion, one of the most extraordinary tests to which a spiritual faith was ever subjected.
In the end, by the mysterious disappearance of the Assyrian, Jerusalem was saved, the prophet was left with his remnant and the future still open for Israel. But at the beginning of the end such an issue was by no means probable. Jewish panic and profligacy almost prevented the Divine purpose, and Isaiah went near to breaking his heart over the city, for whose redemption he had travailed for a lifetime. He was as sure as ever that this redemption must come, but a collapse of the peoples faith and patriotism at the eleventh hour made its coming seem worthless. Jerusalem appeared bent on forestalling her deliverance by moral suicide. Despair, not of God but of the city, settled on Isaiahs heart; and in such a mood he wrote chapter 22. We may entitle it therefore, though written at a time when the tide should have been running to the full, “At the Lowest Ebb.”
We have thus stated at the outset the motive of this chapter, because it is one of the most unexpected and startling of all Isaiahs prophecies. In it “we can discern precipices.” Beneath our eyes, long lifted by the prophet to behold a future “stretching very far forth,” this chapter suddenly yawns, a pit of blackness. For utterness of despair and the absolute sentence which it passes on the citizens of Zion we have had nothing like it from Isaiah since the evil days of Ahaz. The historical portions of the Bible which cover this period are not cleft by such a crevasse, and of course the official Assyrian annals, full as they are of the details of Sennacheribs campaign in Palestine, know nothing of the moral condition of Jerusalem. Yet if we put the Hebrew and Assyrian narratives together, and compare them with chapters 1 and 22 of Isaiah, we may be sure that the following was something like the course of events which led down to this woeful depth in Judahs experience.
In a Syrian campaign Sennacheribs path was plain-to begin with the Phoenician cities, march quickly south by the level coastland, subduing the petty chieftains upon it, meet Egypt at its southern end, and then, when he had rid himself of his only formidable foe, turn to the more delicate task of warfare among the hills of Judah-a campaign which he could scarcely undertake with a hostile force like Egypt on his flank. This course, he tells us, he followed. “In my third campaign, to the island of Syria I went. Luliah (Elulaeus), King of Sidon-for the fearful splendour of my majesty overwhelmed him-fled to a distant spot in the midst of the sea. His land I entered.” City after city fell to the invader. The princes of Aradus, Byblus and Ashdod, by the coast, and even Moab and Edom, far inland, sent him their submission. He attacked Ascalon, and captured its king. He went on, and took the Philistine cities of Beth-dagon, Joppa, Barka, and Azor, all of them within forty miles of Jerusalem, and some even visible from her neighbourhood. South of this group, and a little over twenty-five miles from Jerusalem, lay Ekron; and here Sennacherib had so good reason for anger, that the inhabitants, expecting no mercy at his hands, prepared a stubborn defence.
Ten years before this Sargon had set Padi, a vassal of his own, as king over Ekron; but the Ekronites had risen against Padi, put him in chains, and sent him to their ally Hezekiah, who now held him in Jerusalem. “These men,” says Sennacherib, “were now terrified in their hearts; the shadows of death overwhelmed them.” Before Ekron was reduced, however, the Egyptian army arrived in Philistia, and Sennacherib had to abandon the siege for these arch-enemies. He defeated them in the neighbourhood, at Eltekeh, returned to Ekron, and completed its siege. Then, while he himself advanced southwards in pursuit of the Egyptians, he detached a corps, which, marching eastwards through the mountain passes, overran all Judah and threatened Jerusalem. “And Hezekiah, King of Judah, who had not bowed down at my feet, forty-six of his strong cities, his castles and the smaller towns in their neighbourhood beyond number, by casting down. ramparts and by open attack, by battle – zuk, of the feet; nisi, hewing to pieces and casting down (?)- I besieged, I captured . . . He himself, like a bird in a cage, inside Jerusalem, his royal city, I shut him up; siege-towers against him I constructed, for he had given commands to renew the bulwarks of the great gate of his city.” But Sennacherib does not say that he took Jerusalem, and simply closes the narrative of his campaign with the account of large tribute which Hezekiah sent after him to Nineveh.
Here, then, we have material for a graphic picture of Jerusalem and her populace, when chapters 1 and 22 were uttered by Isaiah.
At Jerusalem we are within a days journey of any part of the territory of Judah. We feel the kingdom throb to its centre at Assyrias first footfall on the border. The nations life is shuddering in upon its capital, couriers dashing up with the first news; fugitives hard upon them; palace, arsenal, market, and temple thrown into commotion; the politicians busy; the engineers hard at work completing the fortifications, leading the suburban wells to a reservoir within the walls, levelling every house and tree outside which could give shelter to the besiegers, and heaping up the material on the ramparts, till there lies nothing but a great, bare, waterless circle round a high-banked fortress. Across this bareness the lines of fugitives streaming to the gates; provincial officials and their retinues; soldiers whom Hezekiah had sent out to meet the foe, returning without even the dignity of defeat upon them; husbandmen, with cattle and remnants of grain in disorder; women and children; the knaves, cowards, and helpless of the whole kingdom pouring their fear, dissoluteness, and disease into the already-unsettled populace of Jerusalem. Inside the walls opposing political factions and a weak king; idle crowds, swaying to every rumour and intrigue; the ordinary restraints and regularities of life suspended, even patriotism gone with counsel and courage, but in their place fear and shame and greed of life. Such was the state in which Jerusalem faced the hour of her visitation.
Gradually the Visitant came near over the thirty miles which lay between the capital and the border. Signs of the Assyrian advance were given in the sky, and night after night the watchers on Mount Zion, seeing the glare in the west, must have speculated which of the cities of Judah was being burned. Clouds of smoke across the heavens from prairie and forest fires told how war, even if it passed, would leave a trail of famine; and men thought with breaking hearts of the villages and fields, heritage of the tribes of old, that were now bare to the foot and the fire of the foreigner. “Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as the overthrow of strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. Except Jehovah of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah.” {Isa 1:7-9} Then came touch of the enemy, the appearance of armed bands, vistas down Jerusalems favourite valleys of chariots, squadrons of horsemen emerging upon the plateaus to north and west of the city, heavy siege-towers and swarms of men innumerable. “And Elam bare the quiver, with troops of men and horsemen; and Kir uncovered the shield.” At last they saw their fears of fifty years face to face! Far-away names were standing by their gates, actual bowmen and flashing shields! As Jerusalem gazed upon the terrible Assyrian armaments, how many of her inhabitants remembered Isaiahs words delivered a generation before!-“Behold, they shall come with speed swiftly; none shall be weary or stumble among them; neither shall the string of their loins be lax nor the latchet of their shoes be broken; whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent; their horses hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind; their roaring shall be like a lion: they shall roar like young lions. For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.”
There were, however, two supports on which that distracted populace within the walls still steadied themselves. The one was the Temple-worship, the other the Egyptian alliance.
History has many remarkable instances of peoples betaking themselves in the hour of calamity to the energetic discharge of the public rites of religion. But such a resort is seldom, if ever, a real moral conversion. It is merely physical nervousness, apprehension for life, clutching at the one thing within reach that feels solid, which it abandons as soon as panic has passed. When the crowds in Jerusalem betook themselves to the Temple, with unwonted wealth of sacrifice, Isaiah denounced this as hypocrisy and futility. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? saith JehovahI am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear Isa 1:11-15.”
Isaiah might have spared his scornful orders to the people to desist from worship. Soon afterwards they abandoned it of their own will, but from motives very different from those urged by him. The second support to which Jerusalem clung was the Egyptian alliance-the pet project of the party then in power. They had carried it to a successful issue, taunting Isaiah with their success. He had continued to denounce it, and now the hour was approaching when their cleverness and confidence were to be put to the test. It was known in Jerusalem that an Egyptian army was advancing to meet Sennacherib, and politicians and people awaited the encounter with anxiety.
We are aware what happened. Egypt was beaten at Eltekeh; the alliance was stamped a failure; Jerusalems last worldly hope was taken from her. When the news reached the city, something took place, of which our moral judgment tells us more than any actual record of facts. The Government of Hezekiah gave way; the rulers, whose courage and patriotism had been identified with the Egyptian alliance, lost all hope for their country, and fled, as Isaiah puts it, en masse. {Isa 22:3} There was no battle, no defeat at arms (Isa 22:2-3); but the Jewish State collapsed.
Then, when the last material hope of Judah fell, fell her religion too. The Egyptian disappointment, while it drove the rulers out of their false policies, drove the people out of their unreal worship. What had been a city of devotees became in a moment a city of revellers. Formerly all had been sacrifices and worship, but now feasting and blasphemy. “Behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (id. Isa 22:13. The reference of Isa 22:12 is probably to chapter 1).
Now all Isaiahs ministry had been directed just against these two things: the Egyptian alliance and the purely formal observance of religion trust in the world and trust in religiousness. And together both of these had given way, and the Assyrian was at the gates. Truly it was the hour of Isaiahs vindication. Yet-and this is the tragedy-it had come too late. The prophet could not use it. The two things he said would collapse had collapsed, but for the people there seemed now no help to be justified from the thing which he said would remain. What was the use of the citys deliverance, when the people themselves had failed! The feelings of triumph, which the prophet might have expressed, were swallowed up in unselfish grief over the fate of his wayward and abandoned Jerusalem.
“What aileth thee now”-and in these words we can hear the old man addressing his fickle child, whose changefulness by this time he knew so well-“what aileth thee now that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops”-we see him standing at his door watching this ghastly holiday-“O thou that art full of shoutings, a tumultuous city, a joyous town?” What are you rejoicing at in such an hour as this, when you have not even the bravery of your soldiers to celebrate, when you are without that pride which has brought songs from the lips of defeated people as they learned that their sons had fallen with their faces to the foe, and has made even the wounds of the dead borne through the gate lips of triumph, calling to festival! “For thy slain are not slain with the sword, neither are they dead in battle.”
“All thy chiefs fled in heaps;
Without bow they were taken:
All thine that were found were taken ill heaps;
From far had they run.
Wherefore I say,
Look away from me;
Let me make bitterness bitterer by weeping.
Press not to comfort me
For the ruin of the daughter of my people.”
Urge not your mad holiday upon me! “For a day of discomfiture and of breaking and of perplexity hath the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, in the valley of vision, a breaking down of the wall and a crying to the mountain.” These few words of prose, which follow the pathetic elegy, have a finer pathos still. The cumulative force of the successive clauses is very impressive: disappointment at the eleventh hour; the sense of a being trampled and overborne by sheer brute force; the counsels, courage, hope, and faith of fifty years crushed to blank perplexity, and all this from Himself-“the Lord, Jehovah of hosts”-in the very “valley of vision,” the home of prophecy; as if He had meant of purpose to destroy these long confidences of the past on the floor where they had been wrestled for and asserted, and not by the force of the foe, but by the folly of His own people, to make them ashamed. The last clause crashes out the effect of it all; every spiritual rampart and refuge torn down, there is nothing left but an appeal to the hills to fall and cover us-“a breaking down of the wall and a crying to the mountain.”
On the brink of the precipice, Isaiah draws back for a moment, to describe with some of his old fire the appearance of the besiegers (Isa 22:6-8 a). And this suggests what kind of preparation Jerusalem had made for her foe-every kind, says Isaiah, but the supreme one. The arsenal, Solomons “forest-house,” with its cedar pillars, had been looked to (Isa 22:8), the fortifications inspected and increased, and the suburban waters brought within them (Isa 22:9-11 a). “But ye looked not unto Him that had done this,” who had brought this providence upon you; “neither had ye respect unto Him that fashioned it long ago,” whose own plan it had been. To your alliances and fortifications you fled in the hour of calamity, but not to Him in whose guidance the course of calamity lay. And therefore, when your engineering and diplomacy failed you, your religion vanished with them. “In that day did the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth; but, behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.” It was the dropping of the mask. For half a century this people had worshipped God, but they had never trusted Him beyond the limits of their treaties and their bulwarks. And so when their allies were defeated, and their walls began to tremble, their religion, bound up with these things, collapsed also; they ceased even to be men, crying like beasts, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” For such a state of mind Isaiah will hold out no promise; it is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and for it there is no forgiveness. “And Jehovah of hosts revealed Himself in mine ears. Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts.”
Back forty years the word had been, “Go and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again and be healed.” What happened now was only what was foretold then: “And if there be yet a tenth in it, it shall again be for consumption.” That radical revision of judgment was now being literally fulfilled, when Isaiah, sure at last of his remnant within the walls of Jerusalem, was forced for their sin to condemn even them to death.
Nevertheless, Isaiah had still respect to the ultimate survival of a remnant. How firmly he believed in it could not be more clearly illustrated than by the fact that when he had so absolutely devoted his fellow-citizens to destruction he also took the most practical means for securing a better political future. If there is any reason, it can only be this, for putting the second section of chapter 22, which advocates a change of ministry in the city (Isa 22:15-22), so close to the first, which sees ahead nothing but destruction for the State (Isa 22:1-14).
The mayor of the palace at this time was one Shebna, also called minister or deputy (lit. friend of the king). That his father is not named implies perhaps that Shebna was a foreigner; his own name betrays a Syrian origin; and he has been justly supposed to be the leader of the party then in power, whose policy was the Egyptian alliance, and whom in these latter years Isaiah had so frequently denounced as the root of Judahs bitterness. To this unfamilied intruder, who had sought to establish himself in Jerusalem, after the manner of those days, by hewing himself a great sepulchre, Isaiah brought sentence of violent banishment: “Behold, Jehovah will be hurling, hurling thee away, thou big man, and crumpling, crumpling thee together. He will roll, roll thee on, thou rolling-stone, like a ball” (thrown out) “on broad level ground; there shalt thou die, and there shall be the chariots of thy glory, thou shame of the house of thy lord. And I thrust thee from thy post, and from thy station do they pull thee down.” This vagabond was not to die in his bed, nor to be gathered in his big tomb to the people on whom he had foisted himself. He should continue a rolling-stone. For him, like Cain, there was a land of Nod; and upon it he was to find a vagabonds death.
To fill this upstarts place, Isaiah solemnly designated a man with a father: Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah. The formulas he uses are perhaps the official ones customary upon induction to an office. But it may be also, that Isaiah has woven into these some expressions of even greater promise than usual. For this change of office-bearers was critical, and the overthrow of the “party of action” meant to Isaiah the beginning of the blessed future. “And it shall come to pass that in that day I will call My servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah; and I will clothe him with thy robe, and with thy girdle will I strengthen him, and thine administration will I give into his hand, and he shall be for a father to the inhabitant of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will set the key of the house of David upon his shoulder; and he shall open, and none shut: and he shall shut, and none open. And I will hammer him in, a nail in a firm place, and he shall be for a throne of glory to his fathers house.” Thus to the last Isaiah will not allow Shebna to forget that he is without root among the people of God, that he has neither father nor family.
But a family is a temptation, and the weight of it may drag even the man of the Lords own hammering out of his place. This very year we find Eliakim in Shebnas post, {Isa 36:3} and Shebna reduced to be secretary; but Eliakims family seem to have taken advantage of their relatives position, and either at the time he was designated, or more probably later, Isaiah wrote two sentences of warning upon the dangers of nepotism. Catching at the figure, with which his designation of Eliakim closed, that Eliakim would be a peg in a solid wall, a throne on which the glory of his fathers house might settle, Isaiah reminds the much-encumbered statesman that the firmest peg will give way if you hang too much on it, the strongest man be pulled down by his dependent and indolent family. “They shall hang upon him all the weight of his fathers house, the scions and the offspring” (terms contrasted as degrees of worth), “all the little vessels, from the vessels of cups to all the vessels of flagons. In that day, saith Jehovah of hosts, shall the peg that was knocked into a firm place give way, and it shall be knocked out and fall, and down shall be cut the burden that was upon it, for Jehovah hath spoken.”
So we have not one, but a couple of tragedies. Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, follows Shebna, the son of Nobody. The fate of the overburdened nail is as grievous as that of the rolling-stone. It is easy to pass this prophecy over as a trivial incident; but when we have carefully analysed each verse, restored to the words their exact shade of signification, and set them in their proper contrasts, we perceive the outlines of two social dramas, which it requires very little imagination to invest with engrossing moral interest.