e of Zion. If we divide these twenty-seven
chapters into three equal sections of nine chapters each, the first and
second close with the words: "There is no peace, saith my God, to the
wicked" (chaps. 48:22; 57:21); while the third ends with a more
extended, threatening against the wicked (chap. 66:24). The prominent
characteristics of these three sections are thus given by Keil:

"The _first_ of these sections (chaps. 40-48) portrays the relation of
Israel to the heathen nations; and from the redemption of Israel
effected through Cyrus, the servant of God, it unfolds the certain
victory of the Theocracy over the gods and powers of the heathen world.
The _second_ section (chaps. 49-57) exhibits Israel as the seat of
salvation for the world. This it does by carrying out the thought that,
just as Cyrus is to redeem Israel from the Babylonish captivity, so must
the true servant of Jehovah, by his vicarious suffering and death, make
expiation for sin, raise the covenant people to true glory, and make
them, through the establishment of 'the sure mercies of David' (55:3),
the centre of salvation for the whole world. Finally in the _third_
section (chaps. 58-66), after an exhortation in which the sins of the
people are acknowledged and rebuked (chaps. 58, 59), the prophet
foretells, in a series of majestic images, how the Theocracy shall be
glorified when it shall become, in connection with the creation of a new
heaven and a new earth, the perfected kingdom of God." Introduction to
the Old Testament, Sec. 65. This view of the glorification of the Theocracy
in the latter days is preeminently just, provided only that we do not
understand the Theocracy in a gross literal sense. It is the true
kingdom of God, once embodied in the old Theocracy, but now existing
under the freer forms of Christianity, that is heir to all this glory.

7. As Isaiah holds the first place among the Hebrew prophets in the
canon, in the extent of his writings, and in the fulness of his
prophecies concerning the Messiah and his kingdom, so has he been first
also in receiving the assaults of those who deny the supernatural
character of revelation. Since the last quarter of the last century
persistent attempts have been made to show that the whole of the second
part (chaps. 40-66) and various sections of the first part, particularly
all those that relate to the overthrow of Babylon, belong not to Isaiah,
but to an unknown prophet who lived about the close of