zenith of its glory, he received from the mouth of God himself the solemn warning:  “If ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your children, and will not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them; then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a by-word among all people.” 1 Kings 9:6, 7.  When the prophet wrote, these awful threatenings had been fulfilled upon the kingdom of the ten tribes, and he had been commissioned to announce their approaching fulfilment upon Judah also, and that in the form of a captivity in Babylon:  “Behold, the days come, that all that is in thy house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon:  nothing shall be left, saith the Lord.  And of thy sons which shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon” (39:6, 7).  Micah also had foretold, in express terms, both the Babylonish captivity, and the subsequent delivery of God’s people (4:10).  We see, then, what a full preparation had been made for the revelations vouchsafed to Isaiah in the chapters now under consideration.  They relate not to something new and unheard of, but to a captivity which he had himself foretold in accordance with the threatenings of God by former prophets.  Under the illumination of the Holy Spirit he is carried into the future of Zion.  In prophetic vision he sees her land wasted, her temple burned, and her children groaning in captivity.  As the nearest interposition of God in her behalf, he foretells her liberation by Cyrus, the anointed of the Lord, and her restoration to the promised land.  But this is only the earnest and pledge of a higher redemption through the Messiah, the true servant of Jehovah, under whom she shall be glorified with a perpetual salvation, and her dominion extended over all the earth.  To limit the prophet’s vision to the deliverance from Babylon would be to make him a messenger of glad tidings which mocked the hopes of the covenant people; for this deliverance did not fulfil the just expectations which his lofty promises awakened in the bosoms of the pious remnant of Israel.  No; it is in Christ’s redemption alone, of which that of Cyrus was only a shadow, that Zion receives in full measure the glorious promises which shine forth in this part of Isaiah.

If now we consider the form of these promises, we find that they bear throughout the stamp of true prophecy, as distinguished from history.  They have neither the dress of prose history, with its dates and circumstantial details, such as we find in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, nor of historic poetry, like the song of Deborah and Barak; like the seventy-eighth hundred and fifth, and hundred and sixth psalms.