--the comforting
love follows, step by step, the grief which is indefatigable in its
repetitions. [Pg 195] From this circumstance is to be explained the
habit of adding several epithets to the name of God; these are as many
shields which are held up against despair, as many bulwarks against the
things in sight, by which every thought of redemption was cut off Where
God is the sole help, every thing must be tried to make the
Congregation feel what they have in Him. A series of single phrases
which several times recur _verbatim_, _e.g._, "I am the Lord, and none
else, I do not give mine honour to any other, I am the first and the
last," are easily accounted for by the Prophet's endeavour and anxiety
to impress upon the desponding minds truths, which they were only too
apt to forget. If other linguistic peculiarities occur, which cannot be
explained from the subject, it must be considered that the second part
is not by any means a collection of single prophecies, but a closely
connected whole, which, as such, must necessarily have its own peculiar
_usus loquendi_, a number of constantly recurring characteristic
peculiarities. The character of unity must necessarily be expressed in
language and style also. The fact, however, that, notwithstanding the
difference of style betwixt the first and second parts, the second part
has a great number of characteristic peculiarities of language and
style in common with the first part (a fact which cannot be otherwise,
if Isaiah was the author of both), was first very thoroughly
demonstrated by _Kleinert_, while _Kueper_ and _Caspari_ have been the
first conclusively to prove, that the second part was known and made
use of by those prophets who prophesied between the time of Isaiah and
that of "the great unknown."

The close connection of the second part with the first is, among other
things, proved also by the circumstance that both are equally strongly
pervaded with the Messianic announcement. Chap. i.-xii. especially
have, in this respect, a remarkable parallel in the second book of the
second part. The fact, moreover, that the single Messianic prophecies
of the second part agree, in the finest and most concealed features,
with those of the first part, will be shown in the exposition.

[Footnote 1: Chap. xxxvii. 38, (comp. 2 Kings xix. 37), describing
apparently the murder of Sennacherib as belonging to the past, does not
decide any thing as to the composition of this chapter by