have been their common author. This would be next to madness and yet this is what is calmly, and in good set terms, here done, with regard to the prophecy of Isaiah. Again, let any one compare the tragedies of our immortal bard with his comedies; and then let him ask himself, in the true spirit of German rationalism, whether it is possible the same person could have been their common author? Could the man who wrote the tragedy of Macbeth, have also written "Much ado about Nothing?" Quite impossible. Modern science can never receive a proposition so incredible and monstrous! But to come to particular expressions. Shakespeare speaks in one place of "the thunder's dreadful organ-pipe;" in another, of the "all-dreaded thunder stone;" and in another he designates it Heaven's "sharp and sulphurous bolt." Now, I ask: Is it possible Shakespeare could ever have varied thus in his expressions? Must we not here have had a pseudo-Shakespeare, who probably lived in the times of the second Charles? For it is quite certain that we can identify some expressions found in these writings with others in Dryden, Butler, &c. There must have been too a pseudoMilton. Let any one read the opening of the Paradise Lost, and then let him turn to the little poem termed L'Allegro, and say, whether his reason and rationalism will allow it to be possible, that the same man could have written both! Impossible. The latter is the production of a pseudoMilton, who must have lived long after the times of the commonwealth. Q. E. D. Nor could the same person who wrote the Comus have composed the Paradise Lost; for in the latter it is said of the clouds, "till the sun tinge your fleecy skirts with gold." But in the Comus, a cloud is said to "turn its silver lining to the moon." The question is: Could the same man have spoken of the fleecy skirts of a cloud, and of its silver lining? Besides, the one speaks of gold, the other of silver; making distinctions as plain and obvious as those of the gold and silver ages! We have then rationally, and of course truly, a pseudo-Cicero, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton: and, with a very little trouble we may shew, that there are pseudo-authors under every name, not excepting those of Bertholdt, Rosenmüller, and Gesenius.

We now come to the specific charges. The first phrase pointed out is in! 177, Jehovah's servant; put to signify

the better part of the people. I will allow, that this combination with its plural in, servants of Jehovah, occurs frequently in the last six and twenty chapters of Isaiah, while neither of them occurs in the first thirty-nine; but I will not therefore also allow, that the author of the first, could not have been the author of the last, portion of this book. This would be to lay it down as a rule, that every author is always bound to use the same expressions under all circumstances, which is absurd. Besides, a good reason can be given, why expressions of this sort might be expected to occur in this last portion, which do not in the first. We will take for granted, that an author may be more or less minatory, as his subject may require. This, I think, no one will dispute. In the first thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah, the writer may then employ language of a more threatening nature, than he does in the last six and twenty; although, as already noticed, the first part is not without its consolations they are, however, less continuous and the latter part of the book seems more particularly to have been set apart for this purpose, in order, as it should seem, to assure the pious Jews that their expectations should not fail. Now, under such circumstances, is it not likely that such addresses as servant of Jehovah, servants of Jehovah, Israel my servant, and the like, would more frequently be had recourse to, than when it was the business of the prophet to insist generally on threats? These are evidently expressions of endearment, which could not be used in conjunction with such as, Ye rulers of Sodom, people of Gomorrah, and the like, which often occur in the first part. But why, it will be asked, do these expressions never occur in the first thirtynine chapters? I answer: I know not: but I do know, that in the last four books of the Eneid, and in the last eight of the Iliad, a great number of words and phrases do occur not to be found in the preceding books, where a less cogent reason can be given for the occurrence, than that already advanced with regard to Isaiah. Authors, for some reason or other, do insist upon the right of choosing their own language; and they do occasionally very much vary in its application. In the last six and twenty chapters of this prophet, there is, nevertheless, a wonderful conformity of style and phraseology with the preceding thirty-nine, as we

shall presently see, notwithstanding the omission of this one phrase.

But have we nothing in the first thirty-nine chapters equivalent in sense and feeling with the phrases in question, and such as we may suppose (allowing the variety just noticed in Milton and Shakespeare) a writer of this cast would naturally say? We have in chap. xxvi. 20, yh, "come, my people;" xxxii. 18, y, "and my people shall dwell;" xxxv. 10, 7, and the ransomed of Jenin hovah,' "* &c. Now, I may ask : Is it improbable that an author, who in one place calls the true Israelites the servants of Jehovah, would style them in another his people, his redeemed, &c.? I think not. It is just what other authors do in similar cases, as noticed above with regard to Shakespeare and Milton. Nor is there any thing new in the phrase, servant or servants of Jehovah, or my servants. We have, Lev. xxv. 42, D, "for they are my servants." So 2 Kings, x. 23, in ", "the servants of Jehovah ;" ib. my servants the prophets." So also Moses is termed in, “the servant of Jehovah," Deut. xxxiv. 5; and Isa. xxii. 20, Eliakim is termed, my servant. The phrase too, in 2, "to serve Jehovah,” occurs in Exod. x. 8, 24, 26, &c. and also in the early part of this prophet, chap. xix. 21, 23. In verse 25 we have, my people, the work of my hands, and mine inheritance, applied to Egypt, Assyria, and Israel, respectively. Although, therefore, we have not the very phrase, we have the phraseology, with other equivalents, such as we might naturally have expected from some one author, treating the same subject under a different point of view. No good reason can, therefore, hence be deduced to prove, that the first thirty-nine, and the last six and twenty chapters, of the book of Isaiah did not proceed from the same author. On the contrary, we have here every thing that might have been reasonably expected from one and the same writer.

:

The next word adduced is, messenger, &c. found in chap. xlii. 18, in a sense synonymous with servant of Jehovah, &c. I remark: The utmost that can be made of this

* So also the synonyme in, the redeemed of Jehovah, chap.

lxii. 12.

M

is, that the word seems here to occur in a sense perfectly equivalent to T, servant; but it only seems to do so. Messenger and servant are so nearly synonymous in their use throughout the Hebrew Bible, as every one will see who will take the trouble to consult the Concordance, that it must require no ordinary stretch of the imagination to extract here from the parallelism the fact, that servant and messenger are perfectly synonymous. Köcher,* one of the best German scholars of the last century, says on this verse, that although the parallelism is not to be neglected, still it is not to be too much pressed which, I am sure, every one who has had any practice in the Hebrew Bible must allow to be just.

It is far from certain, however, whether Dr. Gesenius, or Dr. Rosenmüller, has yet arrived at the true sense of this passage. For my own part, I believe they have both failed; and these are my reasons: I think there can be no doubt that the eighteenth verse refers to the Israelites, "Hear, ye deaf," &c. ye deaf," &c. But it may be justly doubted, whether the following verse relates to the same persons certainly the reasons given by Mr. Rosenmüller and Dr. Gesenius are not sufficient to shew that it does.

nbrie, “my messenger (whom) I will send," says Rosenmüller; "for this people was destined to call other nations from the worship of idols, and to bring them to the true religion.”+ My remark is: I know of no such intimation in the Old Testament; nor can Mr. Rosenmüller adduce any, directly to prove his assertion. It is true, salvation was to be of the Jews, and the knowledge of the law to come from Jerusalem; but this is a very different thing from affirming, that the Jews should as a people be the teachers or publishers of either. The Apostles were indeed Jews: but it will require some violence to identify them with the Jewish people. The fact is, the Jews were, as a body, their most inveterate enemies; and such they still are to their doctrine. I am of opinion, therefore, that the term, my messenger, cannot with propriety be here referred to the Jewish people. But, as it is occasionally applied to the prophets, I may ask,

*

"Dixerim tamen, parallelismum ut non negligendum, sic neque nimis aut ubique urgendum esse," in Rosenmüller's scholia on the passage. † See schol. in loc.

Why may it not be referred to Isaiah himself, especially as we find him commissioned in the sixth chapter of this prophecy, to go and preach to the Jewish people? Let us turn to that passage. At verse 8, it is said: "Whom shall I send? ( the very word used here), and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." Again, in the following verses, we have matter perfectly similar to that in chap. xlii. “And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart (i. e. pronounce it to be*) fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see," &c. Then, in the forty-second chapter, after declaring, (ver. 13.) that "The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man" (i, see chap. ix. 6, where the same term is applied to God), &c. we have at verse 16, "And I will bring the blind by a way they knew not; I will make darkness light before them," &c.: and at verse 18, "Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see." I think, therefore, we may safely conclude, that these passages are parallel in subject and sense. † Let us now proceed to verse 19: "Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I sent ?" Thus it stands in our authorised version: but I object, for several reasons. In the first place, I object to being translated by "who is blind?" because this rendering makes the whole passage obscure and secondly, because it is not necessary so to render it. The word y we find used as a verb in the Pihel conjugation, as in 2 Kings, xxv. 7. Jer. xxxix. 7. lii. 11, &c. where it may be translated he blinded, or the like. And in Exod. xxiii. 8, we have a ", "for a gift blindeth the wise." See Deut. xvi. 19, where the blindness superinduced is also mental. In this place, therefore, I shall take to mean, he blinded, or he pronounced to be blind, just as in the instance above cited, in which he made fat, or pronounced the people to be so. Taking this verb then, in Pihel, I shall, for the sake of consistency, take as a verb in Pihel also, and signifying, he pronounced (them to be) dumb. The whole verse (19) may then be thus rendered:

* See my Hebrew Grammar, pp. 111, 112, 119, &c.

+ Passages parallel to these will also be found in chapters xxix. 10, 18. xxxv. 5. xliii. 8. which may serve to shew, how much our prophet, both in his first and last portions, is attached to this phraseology.