and promise of such a character that it
must cover the whole future period of the Messiah's kingdom: "In
that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious,
and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for
them that are escaped of Israel" (chap. 4:2); and so he goes on
to describe the glory of the latter days, when the Lord, having
"purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the
spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning," "will create
upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon her
assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a
flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a
defence" (ver. 4, 5). Here we have, in a certain sense, an
indication of time, but it is wholly indefinite. No date is
given for the fulfilment of the prophecy, nor any exact
chronological order of succession. The prophet began with the
judgments that impended over his countrymen. He ends with the
full glory of the Messiah's reign, without any indication of the
intervening interval of time.

Another striking example is furnished by the eleventh chapter of
Isaiah in connection with the preceding context. The tenth
chapter of Isaiah contains an account of the Assyrian monarch's
progress through the land of Judea, ending with a figurative
account of his overthrow: "Behold the Lord, the Lord of hosts,
shall lop the bough with terror; and the high ones of stature
shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled. And he
shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon
shall fall by a mighty one" (ver. 33, 34). Immediately upon this
prediction, and with reference to the Assyrian bough and the
thickets of Lebanon--Sennacherib with his host--that have been
hewn down, follows a prophecy of the Messiah's advent: "And
there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a
branch shall grow out of his roots." Chap. 11:1. The prophet
represents these two events, the overthrow of the Assyrian and
the advent of the Messiah, as so connected that the latter
follows as a natural sequel to the former, passing over in
silence the many intervening centuries. He represents, again,
the Messiah's kingdom as one of continuous victorious progress,
till "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as
the waters cover th