CHAPTER XI ISAIAH ON DEATH

I took up the epistle to the Romans, but I did not read it long. Another subject stepped in to claim immediate attention in the first words on which I lighted. They were these, “Isaiah cries aloud on behalf of Israel, Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant [alone] shall be saved,” and then, “Even as Isaiah has foretold, If the Lord of Sabaoth had not left seed to us, we should have become as Sodom and should have been made like unto Gomorrah.” Previously when I had read these words I could neither understand them nor see the way to understand them, not knowing the meaning of “Sodom” and “Gomorrah,” nor even “Isaiah.” But now, knowing that Isaiah was one of the principal Hebrew prophets, I began to see that many obscure passages of Paul might become clearer to me if I first studied this prophet. This view was confirmed when I found Paul, later on, quoting him again, “But Isaiah is very bold and says, I was found by them that sought me not, I became manifest to them that consulted me not; but with reference to Israel he says, All the day long, I stretched out my hands to a people disobedient and gainsaying.” The name also occurred toward the close of the epistle thus, “Isaiah says, There shall be the root of Jesse, and he that is raised up to rule over the nations; on him shall the nations set their hope.” These last words reminded me of the doctrine of Epictetus about Diogenes “to whom are entrusted the peoples of the earth and countless cares in their behalf.”

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But I did not know what “root of Jesse” meant. The name, “Jesse,” I faintly remembered reading in the poems of David; but where it was I could not recall. Hence the phrase was obscure. I determined to put off the further study of Paul for the present, and to glance through the book of Isaiah in the hope of meeting this and other passages quoted above. Accordingly I unrolled the prophecy and began to read it from the beginning.

At first, the language was clear—though the Greek was as bad as in the poems of David. The “children” of God, said the prophet (meaning the ancient Jews or Hebrews, whom he often spoke of as “Israel”) had rebelled against their Father and were being punished with fire and sword by hostile nations executing God’s vengeance on their impiety. Then came the sentence I quoted above, from Paul, about the “remnant.” After this, the prophet introduced “the Lord”—that is the God of the Jews—as saying that He cared no longer for their incense or their offerings because they came from hands stained with blood. This was somewhat like the saying of Horace about Phidyle mentioned above. But what followed was not like anything in Horace: “Wash you, make you clean; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” If they would act thus, then, said God, “though your sins be red as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” As though the nation were molten metal in a crucible, and He Himself were refining them with fire, the Lord said to the whole people of Israel, “I will purge away thy dross … afterwards thou shalt be called the city of righteousness.”

I had begun to hope that I should be able to understand this author as easily as Euripides and much more easily than ?schylus. But now came obscurities. First I read of a golden age. People were to “beat their swords into ploughshares,” and not to “learn war any more.” Then I found a mention of general destruction as by a universal earthquake. Then came, without any chronological or other order apparent to me, the following pictures, or predictions:—a land without a ruler governed by children and women; a picture of luxurious ladies[104] of rank, a list of their dresses, ornaments, jewels and cosmetics; a “branch of the Lord, beautiful and glorious”; a purifying with a “spirit of burning”; “a song of my beloved touching his vineyard”—all confused together (so it seemed to me at the time) like the prophecies of the Sibyl.

As far as I could see, most of these prophecies dealt with the internal corruption of the nation. The “vineyard” of the Lord was the people of Israel. When He visited the vineyard, looking for fruit, said the prophet, “He looked for judgment but behold oppression.” After this, came a vision of the Lord’s glory, and then predictions of external calamities, and invasions of foreign nations. But yet there was a promise of the birth of a Deliverer, a Prince of Peace, to sit “upon the throne of David.” Following this, at some interval, were the words for which I was searching, about “the root of Jesse.” And now I could understand them, for they were preceded by this prediction, “There shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit.” Just before that, there had been a description of an invading army, coming as the instrument of the Lord’s wrath and “lopping the boughs with terror” and hewing down “the high ones of stature.”

Then all was clear to me. I perceived the connexion between the “child” that was to sit on “the throne of David,” and the “shoot out of the stock of Jesse.” The two together brought back to my mind that passage which I could not before recall from the Psalms, “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” The words of Isaiah were like those of Sophocles where he is speaking of the destruction of the royal house of Laius. Sophocles calls the surviving child the “root,” and laments because the axe of Fate was destroying it just when a branch was on the point of “shooting up” from the “stock” so as to produce fruit. So now, but in an opposite mood of hope and joy, Isaiah said that the royal house of David the son of Jesse would not be exterminated, though many of its scions would be cut off. A “branch” would “shoot up” and the succession to the kingdom would be maintained.

In the same way, I perceived, the great Julius, or the[105] Emperor Augustus, being descended from Iulus, the son of ?neas, might be called “the shoot out of the stock of Anchises,” transported from Asia to Europe so as to “shoot up” into a new kingdom more glorious than the old. This, too, explained the word “remnant” used by Paul. As the Trojan followers of ?neas were a “remnant,” so too must be the Jewish followers of this “child,” a remnant left from defeat, disaster, and captivity, after a great “lopping of the boughs with terror.” Virgil sang about the empire of the house of Iulus not as a prophet, but as a poet, prophesying, so to speak, after the event. Isaiah appeared merely to predict empire as a prophet, and a false prophet, prophesying what had not been, and never would be, an “event.” The tree of the empire of Rome was erect for all the world to look on. The tree of the kingdom of Jesse appeared to me as extinct as the house of Laius. So I thought then.

Yet I knew that Paul looked at the matter differently and regarded these prophecies as having been, or as about to be, fulfilled. And when I looked more closely into the sayings of Isaiah about the future kingdom, I saw that many of them were capable of two meanings. Sometimes the prophet appeared to be contemplating a kingdom established in the ordinary way by force of arms—a conquest achieved, or at all events preceded, by fire, sword, and desolation. But, for the most part, it seemed to be an empire of peace to be brought about by some kind of persuasion, or feeling. A sudden conviction was to take hold of all the nations of the earth, so that they were to exclaim, with one consent, as at the sound of a trumpet, “Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,” meaning the Temple in Jerusalem.

In this kingdom, however brought about, the Lord was to be King, and there was to be a “covenant” between Him and all the citizens or subjects, a covenant of righteousness. The subjects were to obey the King and the King would give them a righteous spirit. In some respects the covenant of obedience was to resemble that philosophic oath which Epictetus had enjoined on us, namely, to consult our own interests, to be true to ourselves (meaning, to the spirit of righteousness within us).[106] But the prophet regarded righteousness as loyalty, or truth, not to ourselves, but to our King.

That seemed to me one great difference between the Greeks and the Hebrews in their notions of worship. The Greeks, when they lifted their thoughts above themselves, looked, in the first place, each man to his several city, and in the next place, to the Gods. They did not think in the first place of the Gods. For the Gods were many, while the City was one. But the ancient Jews, the men of Israel, or at least their prophets, looked to their Lord God as their King—the Father, or sometimes the Husband, of Israel. Although they were many tribes, they had but one God, the Lord God, who had delivered them from the land of Egypt. This Lord God was a God of justice and truth, hating oppression, a defender of the widow and the fatherless. To be loyal to Him was righteousness.

And herein—as I soon began to perceive—was the great difference between the view of righteousness or justice taken by Isaiah and that taken by our Roman lawyers, or any lawyers bound to a written law. The lawyer’s righteousness was legality; the prophet’s was loyalty. Epictetus and Isaiah agreed together in aiming at loyalty, not legality. Both disliked obedience paid to mere rules and commandments of men. But the former for the most part inculcated loyalty that seemed like loyalty to oneself; the latter, loyalty to God. This precept of Isaiah agreed with the fundamental law prescribed in the code of Moses that the men of Israel were to “love” the Lord their God.

After searching carefully to see what the prophet said concerning the immortality of the soul (about which Moses seemed to be silent) I could find little of a definite kind. In one passage I read “The dead shall arise and they that are in the tombs shall be roused up.” But the preceding lines said “The dead shall assuredly not see life”; so that it was not clear whether the words meant that one nation should be destroyed for ever and another nation should be raised up from destruction to life. The prophet appeared to be thinking of the nation collectively, more often than of separate citizens. The metaphor of the Vine of Israel seemed to be almost always[107] in his thoughts. And his hope seemed to be, not concerning separate branches, that every branch should remain; but that, in spite of being cruelly pruned and cut down almost to the ground, the tree, as a whole, would yet grow up and bear fruit. I noticed also that a certain king called Hezekiah, when praying to be delivered from a disease likely to prove fatal, spoke as though there were no life after death.

But there was one passage, of very mysterious import, which seemed to point to a different conclusion. It spoke about a “servant of God,” of mean aspect but destined to be a great Deliverer—such as Epictetus had described—“bearing upon him the cares” of multitudes. He was to grow up “as a root in the thirsty ground,” which suggested that he was to be “the root of Jesse” above mentioned. But he was not to be like ?neas, “the root” of Anchises. For ?neas divided the spoils in Italy as the prize of his sword. But this Deliverer—so the prophet declared—was “despised and reckoned as naught.” He was “delivered over” to the enemies of his nation as a ransom to save his fellow-countrymen, and it was by their wickedness that “he was led to death.” Yet in the end, said the prophet, “He will inherit many men, and will divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was delivered over to death, and he was reckoned among criminals, and he carried the sins of many and he was delivered over on account of their crimes.”

This was altogether beyond my comprehension at the time. But I saw that I should have to return to this prophecy hereafter; for I recognised its last words as having been quoted by Paul in writing to the Romans. I found afterwards that the passage in Paul spoke about “believing in Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered over for the sake of our transgressions, and was raised up for the sake of our being made righteous.” For the present, however, the passage in Isaiah about the “servant” of God seemed to me important, for this reason mainly, because it indicated a belief in a life after death. And so did another difficult passage—if Paul had interpreted it rightly. My copy of the prophecy said, “Death by its strength hath swallowed up”; but the margin said[108] “Death is swallowed up in victory,” and these latter words, too, I recognised as being quoted by Paul; and this, or some similar, sense appeared to be required by the context.

It was growing late and I was obliged to break off. But I resolved to return to the book next morning before lecture. So far as I had read, it appeared to me that the prophet did not formally recognise the immortality of the soul in general. But in the case of the Suffering Servant he did seem to recognise it. Having the Servant in my mind, I unrolled the book of Isaiah to other passages using the same word, such as, “for my servant David’s sake,” “But thou, Israel, art my servant,” “My servant whom I have chosen.” At last I came to “the seed of Abraham my friend.” In all these passages, God was supposed to be speaking. Then it occurred to me, “Did the prophet make an exception for the Suffering Servant only? Did he not also believe that Abraham’s soul was immortal?” It seemed to me impossible that if the God of the Jews were asked, “Where is Abraham thy friend?” He would reply—or that the prophet would regard Him as replying—“Resolved into the four elements.” On the whole, I was led to the conclusion that Isaiah implied, though he did not express, some kind of doctrine of human immortality dependent on the relation between man and God.