Even as I gave him for a witness' to the peoples, 15 Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not," And a nation that knew not thee shall run unto thee, Because of3 Jehovah thy God, And for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found, 20 Call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts: And let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have mercy upon him; And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 25 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. And my thoughts than your thoughts. 30 For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, And returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, And maketh it bring forth and bud, And giveth seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; 35 It shall not return unto me empty, But it shall accomplish that which I please, And it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.^ For ye shall go out with joy, And be led forth with peace: 40 The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: 45 For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. ' Witness: a witness to Jehovah's power and favor. 2 That is, a foreign nation. 3 Because of: hearing of Jehovah and his wonderful deliverance of his people. • What I promise shall be accomplished. Have we in Isaiah of Babylonia reached the highest point of prophecy? There is one step still higher, and for its development we must wait another century and more. At this moment we have but to reflect that out of this period of spiritual darkness and apparent desertion, isolated in the midst of a populous land, and surrounded by the allurements of idolatry, the people came into a clear vision of Jehovah as the one God, creator of the universe, ruler of all nations, the moving force in human history. With this vision came also to Israel the consciousness of having been chosen by Jehovah not for her own sake but for the accomplishment of a divine purpose-to reveal the true God to all the world. Surely is was a great thing to be the first to give this interpretation of God to the world.1 1 We should do well to consider the courage and vision of the prophet who amid the darkest hours of the captivity and the lack of enthusiasm on the part of his people only sang the louder of the joys which were to come. This is the sort of faith and courage which is needed by any man or woman who would arouse people to a great movement of any sort, for it was a political movement which Isaiah was championing. CHAPTER XIV PROPHETIC MESSAGES IN THE NEW CITY As we recall the inspiring predictions of the two prophets whose work was recorded in the immediately preceding pages, we feel that the only fitting theme for the present chapter would be the story of a glorious return to Jerusalem, and the restoration of the city, as so vividly depicted by the prophets, but ours is not so acceptable a task. It would naturally be expected that the literature through which the later history of Israel could be traced would be more systematic and accessible than the sources from which we gather the history of earlier years, but such is not the case. The events of the period from the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 538 B.C. until about 520 B.C. are recorded only in the Book of Ezra and the record seems quite clearly to be made up at a much later time with scattered and undated documents as a basis. The editor like ourselves was obliged to depend upon his imagination to fill in the gap.' We know that Cyrus reigned but nine years. He died in 529 B.C. and was succeeded by his son Cambyses who within four years completed the conquest of Egypt. Three years later Cambyses committed suicide anticipating difficulty with an impostor, Gaumata, who had rallied discontented vassal states to his support during the absence of the king on his Egyptian campaigns. The usurper was in turn dethroned by Darius, who led a conspiracy of the nobles and claimed to be a descendant of the royal family from which Cyrus had come. In 519 B.C. Darius became master of the situation and established The books of Ezra and Nehemiah give us a story of events in Jerusalem commencing with a decree of Cyrus, said to have come from the first year of the reign of that king, and continuing for about 100 years. A careful study of these accounts with an effort to adjust the events to the established names and dates of Persian history results in confusion. This, with the further fact that the prophets whose writings come from a period not far removed from this make no allusion to so important an event as the decree of Cyrus, or the simultaneous return of so large and important a company of people, leads us to conclude that the account was much later than the events, and is highly colored by the author, who had little reliable data upon which to base his work, but concluded that the predictions of the prophets must have been fulfilled in this systematic and imposing way. himself firmly upon the throne of the Persian empire, having subdued Babylon and other provinces which had taken advantage of the civil war in the Persian empire to revolt from its authority. Did the Hebrews in Babylon accept the opportunity which the policy of Cyrus gave for a general return to Palestine? Did Isaiah of Babylon succeed in inspiring a large number of his fellow-countrymen with courage to exchange the familiar walls of Babylon for the fields and ruins of the city of their fathers? We do not know. We must conclude that in the sixty-six years since the fall of Jerusalem people had been gathering about the site of the city, in some measure rendering it habitable. Many would naturally drift in from the open country with its ruined villages as well as from Egypt and from other localities where they had fled for refuge during the long siege. We recall that the little colony of which Jeremiah was a member was last seen in Egypt. But no country once civilized is easily quite depopulated, and the site of Jerusalem was still the most favorable in Palestine for defense and for commercial life. Doubtless therefore a considerable population had accumulated before Cyrus came to the throne of Babylonia. But the character of this miscellaneous population must have been much below that of the party of the faithful in captivity, who, originally of the best blood, had, in a compact body, lived and suffered together; who had, inspired by the intellectual and literary influences by which they were surrounded, made a careful study of the nation's history, rewriting large portions of it and creating a national literature. These exiled Hebrews had also never been without a great prophet to keep alive in them the religion of Jehovah and to carry them on to higher and higher conceptions of his character. That some of the Babylonian Hebrews did return we are sure, since we find reported as governor of the province of Judah, Zerubbabel, one of the royal house, probably a grandson of Jehoiachin the captive king, who traced his descent from David. (We recall that all the royal house were carried into captivity.) His honor and authority were shared by Joshua the high priest. In 'The new community seems to have made no attempt to establish itself upon a political basis of equality with its neighbors. Its life was no longer that of a nation, but of a community whose bond of unity was that of religion. We find little evidence |