t from
its being connected with the preceding chapter, which has to do with
future things, and in which the preterites have a prophetic meaning; as
also by the analogy of the following preterites from which this can by
no means be separated. But [Pg 99] at the time when this prophecy was
composed, Hezekiah had long ago entered upon the government.

4. The circumstances under which the Prophet makes the King appear are
altogether different from those at the time of Hezekiah. According to
ver. 1 and 10, the royal house of David would have entirely declined,
and sunk into the obscurity of private life, at the time when the
Promised One would appear. The Messiah is there represented as a tender
twig which springs forth from the roots of a tree cut down. In the
circumstance, too, that the stem is not called after David, but after
Jesse, it is intimated that the royal family is then to have sunk back
into the obscurity of private life. This does not apply to Hezekiah,
under whom the Davidic dynasty maintained its dignity, but to Christ
only. _Farther_: In ver. 11 there is an announcement of the return of
not only the members of the kingdom of the ten tribes, but also of the
members of the kingdom of Judah from all the countries in which they
were dispersed. This must refer to a far later time than that of
Hezekiah; for at his time no carrying away of the inhabitants of Judah
had taken place. This argument is conclusive also against the false
modified Messianic explanation as it has been advanced by _Ewald_,
according to which the Prophet is supposed to have expected that the
Messiah would appear immediately after the judgment upon the Assyrians,
and after the conversion and reform of those in the Church who had been
spared in the judgment. The facts mentioned show that between the
appearance of the Messiah, and the Present and immediate Future, there
lay to the Prophet still a wide interval in which an entire change of
the present state of things was to take place. Ver. 11 is here of
special importance. For this verse opens up to us the prospect of a
whole series of catastrophes to be inflicted upon Israel by the world's
powers, all of which are already to have taken place at the time of the
King's appearance, and which lay beyond the historical horizon at the
time of the Prophet.

A certain amount of truth, indeed, lies at the foundation of the
explanation which refers the prophecy to Hezekiah. The fundamental
thought of t