ay be
added the description of the consequences of wealth, and of the
unbounded luxury, in iii. 16 ff.; and the threatening of the withdrawal
of all power, and all riches, as a strong contrast with their present
condition, upon which they, in their blindness, rested the hope of
their security, and hence imagined that they stood in no need of the
assistance of the Lord, iii. 1 ff. Now this description is so
inapplicable to the commencement of Hezekiah's reign, that the very
opposite of it should rather be expected. The invasion by the allied
Syrians and Israelites, the oppression by the Assyrians, and the
tribute which they had to pay to them, the internal administration,
which was bad beyond example, and the curse of God resting on all their
enterprises and efforts, had exhausted, during the reign of the ungodly
Ahaz, the treasures which had been collected under Uzziah and Jotham,
and had dried up the sources of prosperity. He had left the kingdom to
his successors in a condition of utter decay. To these, other reasons
still may be added, which are in favour of the composition of it under
Jotham, while they are against its composition under Hezekiah;
especially the circumstance of their standing at the beginning of the
collection of the first twelve chapters (a circumstance which is of
great weight, inasmuch as these chapters are, beyond any doubt,
arranged chronologically), but still more, the indefiniteness and
generality in the threatening of the divine judgments, which the
prophecy of Micah has in common with the nearly contemporaneous
chapters i. and v. of Isaiah, whilst the threatenings out of the first
period of the reign of Ahaz have at once a far more definite character.
By these considerations we are involuntarily led back to a period when
Isaiah still [Pg 422] pre-eminently exercised the office of exhorting
and reproving, and had not yet been favoured with special revelations
concerning the events of a future which, at that time, was as yet
rather distant,--perhaps as far as the time when Jotham administered
the government for his father, who was at that time still alive;
compare 2 Kings xv. 5. By this hypothesis. Is. iii. 12 is more
satisfactorily explained than by any other; and we are no longer under
the necessity of asserting, that the chronological order is interrupted
by chap. vi.; for this certainly could not have been intended by the
collector. The solemn call and consecration of the prophet to his
of