hat was
carried away into captivity. The disproportionately large number of
_priests_ among the exiled and those who returned--they constitute the
tenth part of the people--is to be accounted for only on the
supposition, that the heathenish conquerors saw that the real essence
and basis of the people consisted in the faith in the God of Israel,
and were, therefore, above all, anxious to remove the priests as the
main representatives of this principle. If, for this reason, they
carried away the priests, we cannot think otherwise but that, in [Pg
182] the selection of the others also, they looked chiefly to the
theocratic disposition on which the nationality of Israel rested. To
this we are led by Jer. xxiv. also, where those carried away are
designated as the flower of the nation, as the nursery and hope of the
Kingdom of God. Incomprehensible, for the time of the exile, is also
the _strict antithesis_ between the servants of the Lord, and the
servants of the idols--the latter hating, assailing, and persecuting
the former--an antithesis which meets us especially in the last two
chapters; comp. especially chap. lxv. 5 ff. 13-15; lxvi. 16. That such
a state of things existed at the time of the Prophet is, among other
passages, shown by 2 Kings xxi. 16, according to which Manasseh shed
much innocent blood at Jerusalem, and, according to ver. 10, 11,
especially the blood of the prophets, who had borne a powerful
testimony against idolatry.

_If it be assumed that the second part was composed during the exile,
then those passages are incomprehensible, in which the Prophet proves
that the God of Israel is the true God, from His predicting the
appearance of the conqueror from the east, and the deliverance of the
people to be wrought by Him in connection with the fulfilment of these
predictions._ The supernatural character of this announcement which the
Prophet asserts, and which forms the ground of its probative power,
took place, only if it proceeded from Isaiah, but not if it was uttered
only about the end of the exile, at a time when Cyrus had already
entered upon the stage of history. These passages, at all events, admit
only the alternative,--either that Isaiah was the real author, or that
they were forged at a later period by some deceiver; and this latter
alternative is so decidedly opposed to the whole spirit of the second
part, that scarcely any one among the opponents will resolve to adopt
it. Considering the very gr