CHAPTER XVIII
The Statesman
Prophet--Isaiah
Isaiah, Chapters 1-39
Agnes M. Lawson
Hints
to Bible Study
The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
Isaiah, in
Jerusalem, is aware of Israel’s
deflection and begins his prophecy with
an arraignment of her, “The ox
knoweth his owner, and the ass his
master’s crib, but Israel doth not
know; my people doth not consider.”
After all, is not this the cause of all
deflection, national and individual? Man
does not consider that, each being
a unit in the whole, certain obligations
necessarily ensue and must be fulfilled.
The universe is a vast machine, not
mechanical, but intelligent, and the
welfare of all depends on the
conscientious fulfillment of the work
apportioned to each unit. The Millennium
will be the result of this knowledge and
the application of it.
Isaiah is
the prophet of the spiritual era; he is
the father of Christianity for it was
conceived in his consciousness seven
centuries before the birth of its
founder. He is the prophet of divine
forgiveness, and brings distinctively a
new something into his writings that we
have not previously had in Biblical
literature. Before this there were seers
who, looking into the heart of Life, saw
a Power which was beneficent when obeyed
and disastrous when disobeyed; or they
were astute observers of natural law,
which they considered a weapon used by
this arbitrary Power to reward the good
or to mete out inexorable punishment to
the evil.
The prophet,
since the time of Samuel four centuries
before, in the establishment of the
monarchy and the rise of the Prophetic
Order, lived apart from the national
life, a decrier of its evils. Isaiah came
in another capacity. He was a part of the
national life, keenly alert to the
political parties which swayed, now to
one side now to the other, the shifting
opinions of a people not grounded in the
faith that they professed; for Judah had
the same political parties that agitated
Israel, the one demanding an alliance
with Egypt, the other with Assyria.
Isaiah, however, was not a politician but
a statesman; and every statesman relies
on the strength of the state, not on an
outside alliance. He contemptuously
refers to one party as “the fly
from Egypt,” and the other as
“the bee from Assyria.” And
unwearingly for over forty years he
preached, wrote and exhorted, that faith
in God alone and His righteousness as the
standard of action, could save Jerusalem
from the fate meted out to Israel.
Not only as
a statesman does Isaiah differ from his
predecessors but in possession of the
faculty of the seer--plus intellect and
reason. Isaiah strikes the first modern
note in the Bible; he makes an appeal to
the reason in man, instead of the blind
belief in an arbitrary God. Thus he comes
before us as a man of genius well
tempered with sanity. Of extraordinary
versatility is he, a statesman, an
orator, a writer, a poet, a historian,
for modern critics assert that he
possibly is the author of Deuteronomy.
Above all, he is a prophet of God who
holds the Golden Age of spiritual
attainment in his consciousness.
Intensely practical is he also in the
minutiae of national affairs; and he is a
prophet who saw many of his own
predictions fulfilled.
No better
introduction can be given the great
prophet Isaiah than that of Richard
Moulton in the Modern Reader’s
Bible: “In this writer it is easy
to see that we have an orator who wields
with ease the whole armory of rhetoric.
It is easy to see also that with him
imagery and poetic expression are much
more than accessories; he loves to linger
upon his images, and rapidly shift them,
until they become lovely pictures which
we love to dwell upon for their own sake.
But Isaiah goes far beyond this; he is
essentially a creative writer, and
regularly conveys his thought in indirect
forms of dramatic
presentation.”
To those who
are seeking the inner connection, that
which lies back of clarity of expression,
the thought that grows clear as the
Vision breaks through the consciousness
of man, Isaiah stands out in
distinctness, for he is the prophet of
the New Age. He is represented in an old
Greek miniature, with Night, sullen and
veiled, behind him, while in front with
torch held aloft is the child IMMANUEL
(God-with-us), the dawn of infinite
promise.
In the
latter days of Israel, Isaiah was witness
to one of her most disgraceful acts.
Israel made an alliance with the king of
Syria and together they marched against
Jerusalem. It is harder to meet treachery
from our own kith and kin than it is from
strangers. News was brought to Ahaz, the
king, "Ephraim is confederate with Syria.
And his heart was moved and the heart of
his people as the trees of the forest are
moved with the wind.” Whatever the
trial that confronts us we must meet it;
and the way of mastery is in the advice
given the king by Isaiah, “Take
heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let
thine heart be faint; for thus saith the
Lord God, it shall not stand, neither
shall it come to pass.”
“Ephraim shall be broken in pieces
that is shall cease to be a
people.” And Isaiah lived through
the year 722 B.C., when faithless Israel
ceased to be a nation, destroyed by the
Assyrians.
Isaiah,
unlike preceding prophets, was sought by
the successive kings of Judah who reigned
during his long ministry. His friendship
and advice were valued. Well would it
have been had his advice always been
followed. His influence at court has led
to the conclusion that he was of royal
origin. It makes no difference to the
seer of any age whether Isaiah was of
royal origin or not; for well he knows
that all men are of royal lineage, as
children of God, and differences between
man and man are but degrees of insight
into this essential truth. From this
basis we shall have to concede that
Isaiah was a royalist of the Royalists,
for, standing on the Watchtower of Faith,
his was the vision of Reality.
“O Lord, I stand continually upon
the watchtower in the daytime,
And am set in my ward whole
nights.”
No enemy can steal upon him unaware
here. After the destruction of Israel,
Assyria turns her attention to Judah,
and marching upon her walled cities
takes them all save Jerusalem; and
besieging Jerusalem, the envoy comes to
demand her surrender.
In his
distress, Hezekiah, the king, sends to
Isaiah, “Lift up thy prayer for the
remnant that is left.” And the
Watchman sends back word, “The
remnant that is escaped from the house of
Judah shall again take root downward, and
bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem
shall go forth a remnant, and out of Mt.
Zion they shall escape; the zeal of the
Lord of Hosts will perform this.
Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning
the king of Assyria, he shall not come
into this city, nor shoot an arrow there,
neither shall he come before it with a
shield, nor cast a mount against it. By
the way that he came, by the same shall
he return. I will defend this city and
save it, for mine own sake, and for my
servant David’s sake.”
The only
power that our enemies have we invest in
them ourselves. All power had been taken
from Assyria by the lone Watchman, and in
the night a mysterious disease breaks out
in the camp and smites “a hundred
and fourscore and five thousand; and when
men arose early in the morning, behold,
they were all dead corpses.” The
besieging army leaves and shortly after
the king of Assyria is killed. Thus would
fade from our lives all the enemies that
flesh is heir to were we to stand on the
Watchtower of Faith and divest them of
all the power that they have, our
belief in them as power. Ignorance,
disease, poverty, old age, death, have no
power; they are mere negations,
and all the power they have they derive
from our belief.
Doom songs
are not usually lovely, yet we must grant
that the Doom Song of Isaiah lingers with
a charming insistence on account of its
persistent refrain. On a single sentence
in which he sees evil and the inevitable
destruction which follows in its wake
will he turn and see,
“For all this His anger not
turned away,
But His Hand is stretched out
still.”
And comfort
it surely is to know that wherever man
stands in belief, steeped in sin, foul
with disease, debased by ignorance, he
has but to right-about-face and see
“His hand is stretched out
still.” Isaiah’s
repetition of this beautiful symbol
carries with it the conviction which
brings the “peace that passeth
understanding,” for it is the
Vision of Reality.
Nothing
escapes his keen observation. The
“women who sit at ease”; the
“boaster that sitteth still”;
the formal religionists who offer
sacrifices yet fail to live in truth and
righteousness; the folly of kings and
princes who are rebellious; the
time-servers who follow after rewards,
and love gifts; all feel the stinging
sarcasm of his facile tongue and pen. Yet
never does he strike a note of despair.
“Wash you, make you clean; put away
evil from mine eyes; cease to do evil;
learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve
the oppressed, judge the fatherless,
plead for the widow. Come now, let us
reason together, saith the Lord: though
your sins be as scarlet they shall be
white as wool. If ye be willing and
obedient ye shall eat of the good of the
land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye
shall be devoured by the sword; for the
mouth of the Lord hath spoken
it.”
Jesus quoted
Isaiah frequently in his numerous
references to Scripture. Jesus had
memorized Deuteronomy until it had become
his subconscious self. It was to him the
great Book of the Law. The word means
“the law repeated” and the
book is the history of the last days of
Moses and his farewell orations to his
people. Who could understand and
translate the great Leader who received
the law on the Mount, as he who stood on
the Watchtower as he made his report,
even though six centuries lie between
them?
Deuteronomy
is said to be the most spiritual book in
the Old Testament. The invisible God
illumines it, and its religion is to live
in the Light and reflect that Light. Yet
so practical is it that the two ways in
which man may tread are clearly outlined;
“the narrow way which leads to
life, and the broad way which leads to
destruction.” It is the dramatic
presentation of the lifework of Moses:
“The Lord was angry with me for
your sakes.” Thus the failure of
Moses to lead the people into the
Promised Land is described. Yet in the
fuller light that is given us we know
that Moses alone can lead us to the Land
of Promise; and he must forever stand on
Pisgah’s heights and overlook it;
for the moment we violate the Law, we
must leave; only under his eye can we
safely abide there.
Writing an
estimate of Isaiah, possibly the greatest
of the prophets, in one article, and
having to choose from illustration after
illustration little pictures of exquisite
beauty, the best one can do is to choose
a couple at random. For instance, can
anything be lovelier than his plea to
Jerusalem, for the “faithful
city” has become deficient also,
and only complete repentance can save
her:
Parable of the Vineyard
“Let me sing of my well
beloved, a song of my beloved touching
his vineyard.
My well beloved had a vineyard
In a very fruitful hill:
And he made a trench about it,
And gathered out the stones
thereof,
And planted it with choicest
vine,
And built a tower in the midst of
it,
And also hewed out a winepress
therein:
And he looked that it should bring
forth grapes--
and it brought forth wild grapes! And
now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men
of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me
and my vineyard. What could have been
done more to my vineyard, that I have
not done in it? Wherefore, when I
looked that it should bring forth
grapes, brought it forth wild
grapes?”
(Modern Reader’s Bible.)
Two distinct
pictures make Isaiah supreme in Prophetic
literature: his Watchtower, and his
prediction of the advent of IMMANUEL.
From his watchtower he sings:
“The morning cometh,
And also the night
If we will inquire, inquire ye;
Come ye again.”
From this high tower of spiritual
insight he sees the process of life.
Life and its good gifts are not on the
surface; he who would understand must
go beneath the exterior; seek its
principles and understand its
processes. Again and yet again must we
come to the fountain of Knowledge to
“inquire.”
For the
night of self-renunciation must precede
the morning of spiritual illumination.
Personal ambitions, material beliefs and
pleasures, and selfish desires must be
lost before the morning can dawn which
ushers in the day of the new spiritual
era. This “Day” will dawn
when we learn, “In returning and
rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and
confidence shall be your strength.”
How can we rise into this except we take
the Watchman’s advice, “Cease
ye from man whose breath is in his
nostrils: from wherein is he to be
accounted of?” The more
understanding that we acquire of the
absolute nothingness of the material, the
more quickly shall we understand the
perfection of the Spiritual.
In Isaiah,
“the Remnant” becomes a
characteristic expression. It is they
alone who save Jerusalem; and from them
shall the Saviour be born:
“For unto us a child is
born,
Unto us a son is given;
And the government shall be upon his
shoulders:
And his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.”
(Modern Reader’s Bible.)
And this
“King shall reign in righteousness,
his princes shall rule in
judgment.” More than this, in this
kingdom every individual can say,
“The state it is I,” for the
Messianic Kingdom is made up of its
units. Each unit is represented in the
greatest summing up of the component
parts of character that has ever been
given. “A man shall be as a hiding
place from the wind, and a covert from
the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry
place, as the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land.”
As nothing
can excel perfection, this will forever
stand the greatest definition of
character that has ever been written. It
is what we shall all be; when God’s
ideal of himself, spiritual man, breaks
through into consciousness. This kingdom
is within the consciousness of man; it is
his established character. Those who are
“greatest in the kingdom” are
those who have wrought this into their
characters in the most positive degree.
The “least in the kingdom”
are those who have these characteristics
the least developed.
In looking
up the word “character” in my
dictionary I find: “A sign, an
engraved mark.” It is what we have
engraved upon ourselves; and as the
Vision of spiritual Man can come to us
only as we ascend into the Watchtower, it
is what we have engraved upon ourselves
from here. Established in truth,
can we not hide those whom the winds of
mortal destiny still buffet from the
tempests within and without? Will we not
make a “covert,” in which man
may be sheltered from sin and disease?
Could a greater tribute be rendered
character than that it should be,
“rivers of water in a dry
place,” where lips and hearts
scorched by mortality’s
unfertilizing drought stretches her weary
wastes over and under them? Who that has
been in desert wastes does not realize
the shelter of the great rock from
scorching sun, and drifts of sand
sweeping by? Has he not seen the tender
green shoots that will venture out even
in the midst of the bleak desert under
its shadow? Cannot an established
character so stand in the midst of
unrighteousness, defend the right no
matter how unpopular it seem, and arrest
the drift that prevents spiritual ideals
from growing in men’s thought? So
can the great spiritual Character stand
in the midst of disease, materialism and
death; a Rock under whose shadow faith,
love and life are established.
N.B.--The
Book of Isaiah ends with the thirty-ninth
chapter. From the fortieth to the
sixty-sixth chapter is a book written at
least one hundred and fifty years later.
This prophet has been called “The
Great Unknown,” and wrote, not from
Jerusalem but from Babylon in captivity.
In this series he will be found in his
proper historic place, under the title of
“The Shadow Christ.”
* * *
* *
Hints to Bible Study
Table
of Contents
