The style in the later chapters of the book of Isaiah is just what we would expect from the prophet when the Holy Spirit opened to his enraptured mind the theme of redemption through a suffering Messiah, in the fifty-third and following chapters of the book.

The objection to conceding the authorship of the entire book to Isaiah, because the prophet mentions Cyrus by name before his birth, is made in the face of the fundamental fact already stated that God inspired the writer, and is therefore the author of prophecy, “declaring the end from the beginning.” (Isa. xlvi. 10.) He knows all the future and whom he will choose to accomplish his glorious purposes.  To deny this fact is to deny all prophecy.  If God can not foretell future events and the instruments for their accomplishment, there can be no prophecy, and God’s omniscience is impeached.  Isaiah prophesied in the seventh chapter and fourteenth verse:  “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”  Matthew affirms that this prophecy was fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. (Matt. i. 22, 23.) He also declares in the same connection that the announcing angel foretold that the name “Jesus” was to be given to the Messiah at his birth.  These preannouncements must be cast aside if the critic’s dictum is accepted.  Shall we discredit Isaiah, the announcing angel, and Matthew on the ground of the critic’s literary acumen?

Further, the student of the Word will remember that when Jeroboam was bringing disaster upon Israel, God sent his prophet to declare:  “Behold a son shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee (the altar at Bethel) shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee.”  More than three hundred years after this prophecy was given, according to Usher’s Chronology, Josiah was born and did the precise things that were predicted concerning him. (See 1 Kings xiii. 2 and 2 Kings xxiii, 15, 16.) The omniscience of the Holy Spirit can predict the name of the instrument as readily as the event which is to be accomplished.

Again, undoubtedly the prophet must speak out of his own environment.  He can speak only where he is.  But who is to decide how many and what allusions he must make to custom or incident in order to satisfy the critic, as to his time and place in history?

The tailor who decides that he must have twenty yards of cloth to make a suit of clothes, when ten yards are sufficient, will shortly be wanting customers.  The critic who has decided how many and what kind of synchronous events must be furnished by the prophet, in order to secure his credence as to authorship, will be left without a prophet or a Bible.

The erection of an arbitrary law, by which to interpret history or prophecy in the Bible, is contrary to all the treatment which secular literature receives from these same critics.