ISAIAH (Heb. Yeshayahu, " Salvation of •God"), the most sublime of the Hebrew prophets, was the son of one Amoz. He uttered his oracles in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Regarding. his outward life, almost nothing is known. He appears to have resided at Jerusalem, in the vicinity of the temple, was married, and had three sons, given him, he says, "for signs and for wonders in Israel." The period of his death is not known, but according to a rabbinical legend, apparently accepted by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 37), (Sanh. 103 b, etc.), he was sawn asunder by order of king Manasseh, who abhorred his oracles (cf. Jos. Ant. x. 31). If this statement is well founded, Isaiah must have been nearly 100 years old when Ile was thus barbarously murdered.—The prophecies of Isaiah, viewed in their literary aspect, do not exhibit a continuous unity of design; they con sist of a series of " visions" beheld at different times, and arranged neither exactly in chronological nor material order. The compiler or editor of the whole is believed by many not to be Isaiah himself. Verse 38th of chap. xxxvii, is regarded by the majority of scholars of note as conclusive proof of a later hand. The grand controversy, however, is not concerning the arrangement of these prophecies, but concerning their authorship. Did they all proceed from one and the same person, or are different authors discernible? Orthodox critics maintain the unity of authorship, and assert that Isaiah, if he did not edit, certainly wrote the whole 66 chapters. The first who doubted this was the Ger man scholar Koppe (1779-81). who suspected that the last 27 chapters (40 to 66) were the work of a later hand. He was followed by Doderlein, Eichhorn, and Justi, and the same view has been substantially adopted by Paulus, Bertholdt, De Wette, Gesenius, Hitzig, Knobel, Umbreit, and Ewald. The chief arguments against the Isaiah-author ship are: 1. That the subject-matter of these burdens relates to what happened long after Isaiah's death, 100 years at least, viz., the redemption of the Jews from captivity. consequent upon the overthrow of the Babylonian monarchy by the Medo-Persian army. 2. That the writer speaks of the exile as something present, and of the desola
tion of Judah as a thing that hail already taken place. 3. That Cyrus is mentioned by name, and an intimate knowledge exhibited of his career. 4. That an extraordinarily minute acquaintance with the condition and habits of the exiles is shown. 5. That the sentiments are far more spiritual. 6. That the style is totally different, being more smooth, flowing, rhetorical, and clear. To these objections, Hengstenberg, Htivernick, Keil, Henderson, Jahn, M011er, Alexander, and others have replied more or less satis factorily. Their principal argument is the predictive character of prophecy. In these prophecies, we have the first distinct and vivid announcements of a Messianic deliverer (whence Isaiah has been called the "Evangelical prophet "). As, however, they are found chiefly in the last 27 chapters (the supposed work of a deutero-Isaiah), it has been made a question, by those who do not believe in prophecy in the usual sense, whether the " deliverer," who redeems the people by his own sufferings, is a literal prediction of Jesus Christ on the part of the prophet, or only a personification of the sanguine hope of deliverance that animates his patriotic and religious soul.
The style of Isaiah possesses an astonishing richness and variety. It reaches the pinnacle of grandeur, and melts into the softest pathos. Ewald, a master of aesthetic as well as of philologic criticism, attributes to him " the most profound prophetic excite ment and the purest sentiment, the most indefatigable and successful practical activity amidst all perplexities and changes of outward life, and that facility and beauty in representing thought which is the prerogative of the genuine poet In the senti ments which lie expresses, in the topics of his discourses, and in the manner of expres sion, Isaiah uniformly reveals himself as the kingly prophet" (Propheten des Allen Bundes, vol. i. p. 166, etc.). Among the chief commentators on Isaiah are Jerome, Aben-Ezra, Abarband, Vitringa, Lowth, Henderson, Calmet, Hitzig, Rosenmfiller, Gesenins, Hengstenberg, and Alexander.