Isaiah 54 - Expositor's Bible Commentary (Nicoll)

BOOK 4

THE RESTORATION

WE have now reached the summit of our prophecy. It has been a long, steep ascent, and we have had very much to seek out on the way, and to extricate and solve and load ourselves with. But although a long extent of the prophecy, if we measure it by Chapter s, still lies before us, the end is in sight; every difficulty has been surmounted which kept us from seeing how we were to get to it, and the rest of the way may be said to be downhill.

To drop the figure-the Servant, his vicarious suffering and atonement for the sins of the people, form for our prophet the solution of the spiritual problem of the nation's restoration, and what he has now to do is but to fill in the details of this.

We saw that the problem of Israel's deliverance from Exile, their Return, and their Restoration to their position in their own land as the Chief Servant of God to humanity, was really a double problem-political and spiritual. The solution of the political side of it was Cyrus. As soon as the prophet had been able to make it certain that Cyrus was moving down upon Babylon, with a commission from God to take the city, and irresistible in the power with which Jehovah had invested him, the political difficulties in the way of Israel's Return were as good as removed; and so the prophet gave, in the end of chapter 48, his great call to his countrymen to depart. But all through Chapter s 40-48, while addressing himself to the solution of the political problems of Israel's deliverance, the prophet had given hints that there were moral and spiritual difficulties as well. In spite of their punishment for more than half a century, the mass of the people were not worthy of a return. Many were idolaters; many were worldly; the orthodox had their own wrong views of how salvation should come; Isaiah 45:9 ff. the pious were without either light or faith. Isaiah 50:10 The nation, in short, had not that inward "righteousness," which could alone justify God in vindicating them before the. world, in establishing their outward righteousness, their salvation and reinstatement in their lofty place and calling as His people. These moral difficulties come upon the prophet with greater force after he has, with the close of chapter 48, finished his solution of the political ones. To these moral difficulties he addresses himself in 49-53, and the Servant and his Service are his solution of them:-the Servant as a Prophet and a Covenant of the People in chapter 49 and in Isaiah 50:4 ff.: the Servant as an example to the people, chapter 50 ff.; and finally the Servant as a full expiation for the people's sins in Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah 53:1-12. It is the Servant who is to "raise up the land, and to bring back the heirs to the desolate heritages," and rouse the Israel who are not willing to leave Babylon," saying to the bound, Go forth; and to them that sit in darkness, Show yourselves". Isaiah 49:8-9 It is he who is "to sustain the weary" and to comfort the pious in Israel, who, though pious, have no light as they walk on their way back. Isaiah 50:4; Isaiah 50:10 It is the Servant finally who is to achieve the main problem of all and "make many righteous". Isaiah 53:11 The hope of restoration, the certainty of the people's redemption, the certainty of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the certainty of the growth of the people to a great multitude, are, therefore, all woven by the prophet through and through with his studies of the Servant's work in Isaiah 49:1., and Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah 53:1-12, -woven so closely and so naturally that, as we have already seen, we cannot take any part of Chapter s 49-53 and say that it is of different authorship from the rest. Thus in chapter 49 we have the road to Jerusalem pictured in Isaiah 49:9-13, immediately upon the back of the Servant's call to go forth in Isaiah 49:9. We have then the assurance of Zion being rebuilt and thronged by her children in Isaiah 49:14-23, and another affirmation of the certainty of redemption in Isaiah 49:24-26. In Isaiah 50:1-3 this is repeated. In 51- Isaiah 52:1-12 the petty people is assured that it shall grow innumerable again; new affirmations are made of its ransom and return, ending with the beautiful prospect of the feet of the heralds of deliverance on the mountains of Judah Isaiah 52:7 b and a renewed call to leave Babylon (Isaiah 52:11-12). We shall treat all these passages in our twenty-first chapter.

And as they started naturally from the Servant's work in Isaiah 49:1-9 a-and his example in Isaiah 50:4-11, so upon his final and crowning work in chapter 53 there follow as naturally chapter 54 (the prospect of the seed Isaiah 53:10 promised he should see), and chapter 55 (a new call to come forth). These two, with the little pre-exilic prophecy, Isaiah 56:1-8, we shall treat in our twenty-second chapter.

Then come the series of difficult small prophecies with pre-exilic traces in them, from Isaiah 56:9 through Isaiah 59:1-21. They will occupy our twenty-third chapter. In chapter 60 Zion is at last not only in sight, but radiant in the rising of her new day of glory. In Chapter s 61 and 62 the prophet, having reached Zion, "looks back," as Dillmann well remarks, "upon what has become his task, and in connection with that makes clear once more the high goal of all his working and striving." In Isaiah 63:1-6 the Divine Deliver is hailed. We shall take Isaiah 60:1-22 - Isaiah 63:6 together in our twenty-fourth chapter.

Chapter 63:7-64 is an Intercessory Prayer for the restoration of all Israel. It is answered in chapter 65, and the lesson of this answer, that Israel must be judged, and that all cannot be saved, is enforced in chapter 66. Chaps. 63:7-66 will therefore form our twenty-fifth and closing chapter.

Thus our course is clear, and we can overtake it rapidly. It is, to a large extent, a series of spectacles, interrupted by exhortations upon duty; things, in fact, to see and to hear, not to argue about. There are few great doctrinal questions, except what we have already sufficiently discussed; our study, for instance, of the term righteousness, we shall find has covered for us a large part of the ground in advance. And the only difficult literary question is that of the pre-exilic and post-exilic pieces, which are alleged to form so large a part of Chapter s 56-59 and 63-66.