ng of Israel, the Lord convinces the Gentiles
of the nothingness of their cause. They are to prove the divinity of
their idols by showing forth the announcements of the Future which
proceeded from them. But they are not able to comply with this demand.
It is only the Lord, the living God, who can do that. Long before the
appearance of the conqueror from the North and East, He caused it to be
_foretold_, and comforted His Church with the view of the Future.
Hence, He alone is [Pg 184] God, and vanity are all those who are put
beside Him. It is said in ver. 22: "Let them bring forth and shew to us
what shall happen; the former things, what they be, show and we will
consider them and know the latter end of them; or the coming (events
make us to hear)." _The former things_ are those which are prior on
this territory; hence the former prophecies, as the comparison of the
parallel passage, chap. xlii 9, clearly shows. The _end_ of prophecy is
its fulfilment. [Hebrew: hbavt] "the coming, or future," are the events
of the more distant Future. As the Prophet demands from the idols and
their servants that only which the true God has already performed by
His servants, we have here, on the one hand, a reference to the whole
cycle of prophecies formerly fulfilled, as _e.g._, that of the
overthrow of the kingdoms of Damascus and Ephraim, and the defeat of
Asshur,--and, on the other hand, to the prophecy of the conqueror from
the East, &c., contained in the second part. The _former_ prophecies,
however, are here mentioned altogether incidentally only; the real
demand refers, as is shown by the words: "What shall happen," only to
the prophecies in reference to the Future, corresponding to those of
our Prophet regarding the conqueror from the East, whose appearance is
here represented as belonging altogether to the _Future_, and not to be
known by any human ingenuity. In ver. 26: "Who hath declared (such
things) from the beginning, that we may know, and long beforehand, that
we may say: he is righteous?" the [Hebrew: mraw] "from the beginning"
puts insurmountable obstacles in the way of the opponents of the
genuineness. If the second part of Isaiah be _spurious_, then the
idolaters might put the same scornful question to the God of Israel.
The [Hebrew: mraw] denotes just the opposite of a _vaticinium post
eventum_.--In chap. xlii. 9: "The former (things), behold, they are
come to pass, and new things do I declare; before they spring forth