uction of Sennacherib's host before Jerusalem,--an event which no
human ingenuity could have known even a day beforehand. But Isaiah does
not content himself with promising to trembling Zion the help of God
against Asshur in that momentary calamity. In harmony with Hosea and
Micah, he promises to Judah, in general, security from Asshur. He says
to Hezekiah, after that danger was over, in chap. xxxviii. 6: "And I
will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the King of Assyria,
and I will defend this city."

Behind the Assyrian kingdom, the Prophet beholds a new power
germinating, viz., the Babylonian or Chaldean; and he announces most
distinctly and repeatedly that from this shall proceed a comprehensive
execution of the threatenings against unfaithful Judah. According to
chap. xxiii. 13, the Chaldeans overturn the Assyrian monarchy, and
conquer proud Tyre which had resisted the assault of the Assyrians.
Shinar or Babylon appears in chap. xi. 11, in the list of the places to
which Judah has been removed in punishment. In chap. xiii. 1-xiv. 27,
Babylon is, for the first time, distinctly and definitely mentioned as
the threatening power of the future, by which Judah is to be carried
into captivity. The corresponding announcement in chap. xxxix. is so
[Pg 7] closely and intimately interwoven with the historical context,
that even _Gesenius_ did not venture to deny its origin by Isaiah, just
as he was compelled also to acknowledge the genuineness of the prophecy
against Tyre, in which the Babylonian dominion is most distinctly
foretold, and even the duration of that dominion is fixed. The 70 years
of Jeremiah have here already their foundation.

The Prophet sees distinctly and definitely that Egypt, the rival
African world's power, on which the sharp-sighted politicians of his
time founded their hope for deliverance, would not be equal to the
Asiatic world's power representing itself in the Assyrian and
Babylonian phases. He knows what he could not know from any other
source than by immediate communication of the Spirit of God, that, by
its struggle against the Asiatic power, Egypt would altogether lose its
old political importance, and would never recover it; compare remarks
on chap. xix.

As the power which is to overthrow the Babylonian Empire appear, in
chap. xxxiii. 17, the Medes. In chap. xxi. 2, Elam, which, according to
the _usus loquendi_ of Isaiah, means Persia, is mentioned besides
Media. This power, and