ahveh
gave him this message: "Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye
indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make
their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and
hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again
and be healed." Then the prophet asked, "Lord, how long?" And Jahveh
answered, "Until cities be waste without inhabitant and houses without
man, and the land become utterly waste, and Jahveh have removed men far
away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land. And if
there be yet a tenth in it, it shall be eaten up; as a terebinth, and as
an oak, whose stock remaineth when they are felled, so the holy seed is
the stock thereof."*

* An explanatory gloss, "the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria
and of the son of Remaliah," which formed no part of the
original prophecy, is here inserted in the text.

Judah, though less powerful, was quite as corrupt as his brethren of
Israel, and the divine wrath threatened him no less than them; it rested
with himself, however, to appease it by repentance, and to enter again
into divine favour after suffering his punishment; the Eternal would
then gather together on Mount Sion those of His faithful people who had
survived the crisis, and would assure them a long period of prosperity
under His law. The prophet, convinced that men could in no wise alter
the decrees of the Highest, save by repentance alone, was astonished
that the heads of the state should strive to impede the progress of
events that were happening under their very eyes, by the elaborately
useless combinations of their worldly diplomacy. To his mind, the
invasion of Pekah and Eezin was a direct manifestation of the divine
anger, and it filled him with indignation that the king should hope to
escape from it by begging for an alliance against them with one of
the great powers: when Jahveh should decide that the punishment was
sufficient for the crime, He would know how to shatter His instruments
without any earthly help. Indeed, Isaiah had already told his master,
some days before the allied kings appeared, while the latter was busy
superintending the works intended to supply Jerusalem with water, to
"Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thy heart be faint,
because of these two tails of smoking firebrands.... Because Syria hath
counselled evil against thee, Ephraim also, and the son of Bemaliah,
saying,