ole,
it is most improbable that the elders should have known, by an oral
tradition, the exact time of the composition of one single discourse,
which has no special date at the head of it. Is it not a far more
natural supposition, that they considered the collection as a whole, of
which the component parts had, indeed, been delivered by the prophet at
a former period, but had been repeated, and united into one description
under Hezekiah; and that they mentioned Hezekiah, partly because it
could not be determined with certainty whether this special prediction
had already been uttered under one of his predecessors, and, if so,
under which of them; and partly, because among the three kings
mentioned in the inscription, Hezekiah alone formed an ecclesiastical
authority?

But just as that quotation in Jeremiah furnishes us with a proof that
all the prophecies of Micah, which have been preserved to us, were
committed to writing under Hezekiah, so we can, in a similar manner,
prove from Isaiah, chap. ii., that they were, at least in part, uttered
at a previous period. The problem of the relation of Is. ii. 2-4 to
Micah iv. 1-3, cannot be solved in any other way than by supposing,
that this portion of a prophecy which, in Jeremiah, is assigned to the
reign of Hezekiah, was uttered by Micah as early as under the reign of
Jotham, and that soon after it Isaiah, by placing the words of Micah at
the head of his own prophecies, expressed that which had come to him
also in inward vision; for, being already known to the people, they
could not fail to produce their impression. [Pg 419] Every other
solution can be proved to be untenable. 1. Least of all is there any
refutation needed of the hypothesis which is now generally abandoned,
viz., that the passage in Isaiah is the original one; compare, against
this hypothesis, _Kleinert_, _Aechtheit des Jes._ S. 356; _Caspari_, S.
444. 2. Equally objectionable is another supposition, that both the
prophets had made use of some older prophecy--one uttered by Joel, as
_Hitzig_ and _Ewald_ have maintained. The connection in which these
verses stand in Micah, is by far too close for such a supposition. We
could not, indeed, so confidently advance this argument, if the
connection consisted only in what is commonly brought forward, viz.,
that upon the monitory announcement of punishment in chap. iii., there
follows, in chap. iv. 1 ff., the _consolatory_ promise of a glorious
future for the godly, an