a firm hand, directs the destinies of nations, and, no less,
the faith in _His servant_ whom He raises to be privy to His
secrets.--(3.) "The use of numbers so exact is against the analogy of
all oracles." But immediately afterwards (ver. 15 comp. with chap.
viii. 4), the time of the defeat is as exactly fixed, although not in
ciphers. In chap. xx. Isaiah announces that after three years the
Egyptians and Ethiopians shall sustain a defeat; in chap. xxiii. 15,
that Tyre would flourish anew seventy years after its fall; in chap.
xxxviii. 5, he announces to Hezekiah, sick unto death, that God would
add fifteen years to his life. According to Jeremiah, the Babylonish
captivity is to last seventy years; and the fulfilment has shown that
this date is not to be understood as a round number. And farther, the
year-weeks in Daniel.--But in opposition to this view, and positively
in favour of the genuineness, are the following arguments: The words
have not only, as is conceded by _Ewald_, "a true old-Hebrew
colouring," but in their emphatic and solemn brevity ("he shall be
broken from [being] a people") they do not at all bear the character of
an interpolation. If we blot them out, then the Prophet says less than
from present circumstances, from ver. 4, where he calls the kings "ends
of smoking firebrands," in opposition to ver. 6, and from the analogy
of ver. 9, where the threatening is much more severe, he was bound to
say. His saying merely that they would not get any more, was not
sufficient. He could make the right impression only when he reduced
that declaration to its foundation--_i.e._, their own destruction and
overthrow. Ver. 16, too, would go far beyond what would be announced
here, if we remove this clause. He announces destruction to the kings
themselves. Finally, the symmetrical parallelism would be destroyed by
striking out these words. The words: "If ye believe not, ye shall not
be established," would, in that case, be without the parallel members.
They are connected with the clause under discussion so much the rather,
that in them it is not specially Judah's deliverance from the Syrians
and Ephraimites that is looked at, but its salvation in general.]

[Footnote 4: By a minute and trifling exposition of what is to be
understood as a whole, and comprehensively, many misunderstandings have
been introduced into this passage. The defeat of Asshur should take
place very soon, but the devastation of the country had been