III.  Evidences That Isaiah 40-66 were Written in Palestine.  Only recently have careful students of Isaiah 40-66 begun to realize that the point of view in all of these chapters is not distant Babylon but Jerusalem.  The repeated references in chapter 56 and following to conditions in Jerusalem have led all to recognize their Palestinian origin.  The evidence, however, regarding chapters 40-55 is almost equally convincing.  The vocabulary and literary figures employed throughout are those peculiar to the agricultural life of Palestine and not to the commercial civilization of Babylon.  The problems also are those of the Judean community.  The class to whom the prophet addresses his messages is evidently the same as that to which Haggai and Zechariah speak.  Jerusalem, not a Jewish colony in Babylon, is the constant object of the prophet’s appeal.  Babylon is only one of the distant lands of the dispersion.  It is from Jerusalem that the prophet ever views the world.  Thus in 43:5,6 he declares in the name of Jehovah: 

Fear not, for I am with thee. 
From the east I will bring thine offspring,
And from the west I will gather them;
I will say to the north, Give up! 
And to the south, Withhold not! 
Bring my sons from afar,
And my daughters from the ends of the earth.

Interpreted in the light of their true geographical setting, these
Prophecies gain at once a new and clearer meaning.

IV.  Their Probable Date.  The reference in 43:23, 24 to the offerings brought by the people to Jehovah’s temple clearly implies that it had already been built.  Furthermore, the charges preferred against the Judean community are very similar to those in the book of Malachi, which is generally assigned to the period immediately preceding the arrival of Nehemiah in 445 B.C. (cf.  Section xcvii).  From the parallels in chapter 48 and elsewhere it is evident that Jehovah’s Messiah in 45:1 is not Cyrus but Israel, the messianic nation, to which Jehovah in earlier days under David and his successors gave repeated victories and far-extended authority.  The presence of the name Cyrus seems without reasonable doubt to be due to a later scribe, who thus incorrectly identified the allusion.  It is supported neither by the metrical structure nor the context of the passages in which it is found.  Furthermore, the ideas in Isaiah 40-55 are almost without exception those which Zechariah had already voiced in germinal form, especially in his latest prophecies preserved in chapters 7 and 8.  They are here more fully and far more gloriously expanded, indicating that their author lived perhaps a generation later than Zechariah.  The years between 500 and 450 furnish the most satisfactory setting for these prophecies.  In a very true sense, however, like many of the psalms, they are timeless.  The question of their exact date is comparatively unimportant except as it throws light upon their interpretation.