eat and decisive importance of these
passages, we must still allow them to pass in review one by one. In
chap. xli. 1-7, the Lord addresses those who are serving idols, summons
them triumphantly to defend themselves against the mighty attack which
He was just executing against them, and describes the futility of their
attempts at so doing. The address to the Gentiles is a mere form; to
work upon Israel is the real purpose. To secure them from the
allurements of the world's religion, the Prophet points to [Pg 183] the
great confusion which the Future will bring upon it. This confusion
consists in this:--that the prophecy of the conqueror from the East, as
the messenger and instrument of the Lord--a prediction which the
Prophet had uttered in the power of the Lord--is fulfilled without the
idolators being able to prevent it. The answer on the words in ver. 2:
"Who hath raised up from the East him whom righteousness calleth
whither he goes, giveth the nations before him, and maketh kings
subject to him, maketh his sword like dust, and his bow like driven
stubble?" is this: According to the agreement of prophecy and
fulfilment, it is none other than the Lord, who is, therefore, the only
true God, to whose glory and majesty every deed of His servant Koresh
bears witness. The argumentation is unintelligible, as soon as,
assuming that it was Isaiah who wrote down the prophecy, it is not
admitted that he, losing sight of the _real_ Present, takes his
stand-point in an _ideal_ Present, viz., the time of the appearance of
the conqueror from the East, by which it becomes possible to him to
draw his arguments from the prophecy in connection with the fulfilment.
It is altogether absurd, when it is asserted that the second part is
spurious, and was composed at a time when Cyrus was already standing
before Babylon. It would indeed have required an immense amount of
impudence on the part of the Prophet to bring forward, as an
unassailable proof of the omniscience and omnipotence of God, an event
which every one saw with his bodily eyes. By such argumentation, he
would have exposed himself to general _ridicule_.--In chap. xli. 21-29,
the discourse is formally addressed to the Gentiles; but in point of
fact, the Prophet here, too, has to do with Judah driven into exile, to
whom he was called by God to offer the means to remain stedfast under
the temptations from the idolators by whom they were surrounded. Before
the eyes, and in the heari