so
complete that a longer time would be required before the fields would
be again _completely_ cultivated.]

[Footnote 5: _Gesenius_ mentions _Pellicanus_ as the first defender of
the Non-Messianic interpretation. But this statement seems to have
proceeded from a cursory view of an annotation by _Cramer_ on _Richard
Simon's Kritische Schriften_ i. S. 441, where the words: "this
historical interpretation _Pellicanus_ too has preferred," do not refer
to Isaiah but to Daniel. Nor is there any more ground for the
intimation that _Theodorus_ a Mopsuesta rejected the Messianic
interpretation.]

THE PROPHECY, CHAP. VIII. 23-IX. 6.
(Chap. ix. 1-7.)
UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN.

In the view of the Assyrian catastrophe, the Prophet is anxious to
bring it home to the consciences of the people that, by their own
guilt, they have brought down upon themselves this calamity, and, at
the same time, to prevent them from despairing. Hence it is that, soon
after the prophecy in chap. vii., he reverts once more to the subject
of it. The circumstances in chap. viii. 1-ix. 6 (7) are identical with
those in chap. vii. Judah is hard pressed by Ephraim and Aram. Still,
some time will elapse before the destruction of [Pg 67] their
territories. The term in chap. vii. 16: "Before the boy shall know to
refuse the evil and choose the good," and in chap. viii. 4: "Before the
boy shall know to cry, My father and my mother," is quite the same.
This is the less to be doubted when it is kept in mind that, in the
former passage, evil and good must be taken in a physical sense. The
sense for the difference of food is, in a child, developed at nearly
the same time as the ability for speaking. If it had not been the
intention of the Prophet to designate one and the same period, _he
ought to have fixed more distinctly the limits between the two
termini._ It might, indeed, from chap. viii. 3, appear as if at least
the nine months must intervene between the two prophecies of the
conception of the son of the Prophet, and his birth. As, however, it
cannot be denied that there is a connection between the giving of the
name, and the drawing up of the document in vers. 1 and 2, we should be
obliged to suppose that, in reference to the first two futures with
_Vav convers._ the same rule applies as in reference to [Hebrew: vicr],
in Gen. ii. 19. The progress lies first in [Hebrew: vtld]; t