his time. Even _Bruno Bauer_ (_Critik der Synopt._ i. S. 19)
could not resist the impression that Immanuel could be none other than
the Messiah. But he, too, is of opinion that Isaiah expected a Messiah,
who was to be born at once, and to become the "deliverer from the
collision of that time." This view has been expanded especially by
_Ewald_. "False," so he says, "is every interpretation which does not
see that the Prophet is here speaking of the Messiah to be born, and
hence of Him to whom the land really belongs, and in thinking of whom
the Prophet's heart beats with joyful hope, chap. viii. 8, ix. 5, 6 (6,
7)." But not being able to realize that which can be seen only by
faith--a territory, in general, very inaccessible to modern exposition
of Scripture--he, in ver. 14, puts in the _real_ Present instead of the
_ideal_, and thinks that the Prophet imagined that the conception and
birth of the Messiah would take place at once. By [Hebrew: elmh] he
understands, like ourselves, a virgin; but such an one as is so at the
present moment only, but will soon afterwards cease to be so;--and in
supposing this, he overlooks the fact that the virgin is introduced as
being already with child, and that her bearing appears as present. In
ver. 15, the time when the boy knows &c., is, according to him, the
maturer juvenile age from ten to twenty years. It is during this that
the devastation of the land by the Assyrians is to take place, of which
[Pg 60] the Prophet treats more in detail afterwards in ver. 17 ff. But
opposed to this view is the circumstance that, even before the boy
enters upon this maturer age (ver. 16), hence in a few years after
this, the allied Damascus and Ephraim shall be desolated; so little are
these two kings able to conquer Jerusalem, and so certain is it that a
divine deliverance is in store for this country in the immediate
future. And, in every point of view, this explanation shows itself to
be untenable. The supposition that a _real_ Present is spoken of in
ver. 14 saddles upon the Prophet an absurd hallucination; and nothing
analogous to it can be referred to in the whole of the Old Testament.
According to statements of the Prophet in other passages, he sees yet
many things intervening between the Messianic time and his own;
according to chap. vi. 11-13, not only the entire carrying away of the
whole people, (and he cannot well consider the Assyrians as the
instruments of it, were it only for this reason