world, alienated from God, shall have returned to Him; when all
that is opposed to God shall have been destroyed; when inward and
outward peace shall prevail, and all the evil caused by sin shall have
been removed. Elevated above time and space, from the height in which
the Holy Spirit has placed him, he surveys the whole development of the
Messianic Kingdom, from its small beginnings to its glorious end.

While the first part, containing the predictions which the Prophet
uttered for the present generation during the time of his ministry,
consists mainly of single prophecies which, separated by time and
occasion, were first made publicly known singly, and afterwards united
in a collected whole, having been marked out as different prophecies,
either by inscriptions, or in any other distinguishable way,--the
second part, destined as a legacy for posterity, forms a continuous,
collected whole. The fact, first observed by _Fr. Rueckert_, that it is
divided into _three sections or books_, is, in the first instance,
indicated by the [Pg 167] circumstance that, at the close of chap.
xlviii. and chap. lvii., the same thought recurs in the same words:
"There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked;" and that the same
thought, viz. the exclusion of the wicked from the promised salvation,
is found also a third time at the close of the whole, although there in
another form. Yet, if nothing else could be advanced in favour of this
tri-partition, we might perhaps be permitted to speak of an accident as
_Knobel_ indeed does. But a closer consideration shows that the three
sections are, inwardly and essentially, distinguished from one another.
Beyond chap. xlviii. 22, there is no farther mention of _Babel_, which
in the first book is mentioned four times (chap. xliii. 14, xlvii. 1,
xlviii. 14, 20); nor of the _Chaldeans_, which occur there five times
(chap. xliii. 14, xlvii. 1, 5, xlviii. 14, 20); nor any farther mention
of _Koresh_, neither of his name (chap. xliv. 28, xlv. 1), nor of his
person, which in chap. xl.-xlviii. is so prominently brought before us
(chap. xli. 2, 25, xlvi. 11, xlviii. 14, 15, _i.e._ immediately at the
_beginning_, after the introduction contained in chap. xl., at the
_close_, and several times in the _middle_); nor of _Bel_ and _Nebo_.
_Farther_--The whole first book is pervaded with the argumentation by
which the God of Israel is proved to be the true God, from His having
foretold the deliverance to be